How to defeat Atium

[Fourth of the Knight]

I asked Brandon this question, but he didn't have time to answer, so I now open it up to all of you.

If you were to use iron to pull something from behind someone using atium, would they see the line connecting you to the object, or would they only be able to notice it if they turned around?

If you guys have any more ideas on how to defeat someone using Atium, please post them here, I'd love to hear them.

[Oversleep]

The atium burner would see the atium shadow of the object flying through them and would step out of the way (like Vin catching the arrow whe she fought Shan.

I think the key to defeating atium burner is speed. I'm talking lots and lots of supersonic shrapnel bullets. They may have time to dodge the bullets, but what will they do when the bullets start exploding aruond them, creating a lot of fast moving sharp bits of metal?

Edited July 3, 2016 by Oversleep

[king of nowhere]

another possibility is through the use of genuine random. we  know that is something can happen many ways, then it leaves multiple atium shadows. I'm thinking something like a rifle mounted on a vibrating support and with a mechanism that will make it fire at random intervals (using a good quantum random generators, that should not be predictable with atium). something like that would generate so many shadows that it would clutter the visual; also, it would be phisically impossible to dodge them all, leaving the atium burner to rely on luck.

[Oversleep]

15 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

another possibility is through the use of genuine random. we  know that is something can happen many ways, then it leaves multiple atium shadows. I'm thinking something like a rifle mounted on a vibrating support and with a mechanism that will make it fire at random intervals (using a good quantum random generators, that should not be predictable with atium). something like that would generate so many shadows that it would clutter the visual; also, it would be phisically impossible to dodge them all, leaving the atium burner to rely on luck.

Atium shadows split only when there is feedback loop with information from the future. In other cases, it's replaced.

[ddleg]

The Best ways to kill an allowmancer capable of burning atium without being able to burn it yourself are.

1. kill him while he sleeps

2. surprise him, and kill him before he can swallow a bead

3. burn electrum and cross your fingers

[asterion137]

i would imagine that the best way to kill a seer would be with explosives. Seeing the future doesn't help if no matter how you move you're going to die.

[Eki]

I think someone theorized that using powerful emotional allomancy could help, since there's no physical evidence of it. So you could still surprise someone burning atium that way.

[Charlie.x.3000]

There is a WoB that said aluminum bullets don't leave behind an Atium shadow.

Quote

INTERVIEW: Mar 6th, 2014

WoR Signing Report - Bartbug (Verbatim)

QUESTION

Would aluminum give an atium shadow? Like if someone threw an aluminum spear?

BRANDON SANDERSON

The aluminum would not give an atium shadow. Good question.

So shooting the Seer or Mistborn with Aluminum bullets would be the best.

Alternative to Aluminum bullets and Electrum include tapping Steel for physical speed (and reaction time).

With quick enough reaction time you can manually split your Atium shadow (like Vin did in the fight with Zane). Also, physical speed just rekts stuff.

[Yata]

6 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

another possibility is through the use of genuine random. we  know that is something can happen many ways, then it leaves multiple atium shadows. I'm thinking something like a rifle mounted on a vibrating support and with a mechanism that will make it fire at random intervals (using a good quantum random generators, that should not be predictable with atium). something like that would generate so many shadows that it would clutter the visual; also, it would be phisically impossible to dodge them all, leaving the atium burner to rely on luck.

Like @Oversleep said a random attack isn't more complex for an Atium's user to avoid/predict... It would leave a precise and single Atium Shadow.

So far as we saw the only way to create a new Atium Shadow (without using magic) it's to be fast enough to react to the Atium's user action (and it's extremely difficoult to performe). The Sequence is this:

1) Atium's user see through your Atium's Shadow what you will do and made something

2) You see his action and react to that, your Atium's Shadow change to reflect your new next move

3) If you do this fast enough and you have in reach the Atium's user. He would be uncapable to decode the new shadow in time.

Insteed for a Seer's PoV a random attack is just an attack with a precise pattern... It doesn't mind if the attacker himself doesn't know it. It's a statick attack and may be annunced by Atium's Shadow like any other standard attack.

In few words, The only way to overcome Atium (without exploit an ultimate helpless situation) is to take your reaction time up and react as fast as you can at the Atium's user moves.

[king of nowhere]

11 hours ago, Oversleep said:

Atium shadows split only when there is feedback loop with information from the future. In other cases, it's replaced.

would it? A subatomic particle is not in a place, it has a certain probability of being in a certain area; it is nowhere and in many places at the same time. It's not like throwing a dice. If you throw a dice, you get a chaoticaly unpredictable trajectory, but still something that can be calculated with enough computational power. A supercomputer could do it, a shard could do it better. But a subatomic particle could not be predicted that way. If you could see it, it would not leave a neat atium shadow. So I surmise that kind of random would defeat even atium.

Yeah, of  course augmenting your speed with steel is the better method, since your reaction time is so fast you can defeat the atium burner no matter what he does - if effectively counts as checkmating him. But it lacks style.

Another way would be through colorless poison gases or bacteriological weapons, since those give no visual clues and therefore leave no atium shadows.

[Oversleep]

4 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

would it? A subatomic particle is not in a place, it has a certain probability of being in a certain area; it is nowhere and in many places at the same time. It's not like throwing a dice. If you throw a dice, you get a chaoticaly unpredictable trajectory, but still something that can be calculated with enough computational power. A supercomputer could do it, a shard could do it better. But a subatomic particle could not be predicted that way. If you could see it, it would not leave a neat atium shadow. So I surmise that kind of random would defeat even atium.

At best you'd have a single constantly changing atium shadow which would collapse into stable one at the moment when the bullet's trajectory is established.

I wonder whether Invested objects have atium shadows. Would atium burner see Shardblade's shadow?

I think that a teleporter could go toe-to-toe with Seer - constantly teleporting close to attack and teleporting away to dodge.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Oversleep

[Yata]

55 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

At best you'd have a single constantly changing atium shadow which would collapse into stable one at the moment when the bullet's trajectory is established.

I wonder whether Invested objects have atium shadows. Would atium burner see Shardblade's shadow?

I think that a teleporter could go toe-to-toe with Seer - constantly teleporting close to attack and teleporting away to dodge.

I think an Invested Object will have an Atium Shadow. After all we saw for the whole time Human's Atium-Shadow (Invested being through their soul) and When Vin fights an Inquisitor, the Inquisitor generates Atium Shadow (an Allomancer that burns Metal became more Invested than a Standard Scadrialan)... She saw also the Inquisitor's Spike in the Atium Shadow... Another Invested Object.

I have to search if there are references to a TLR's Atium-Shadow...This would be a clear and sure proof

Edited July 3, 2016 by Yata

[king of nowhere]

7 hours ago, Oversleep said:

At best you'd have a single constantly changing atium shadow which would collapse into stable one at the moment when the bullet's trajectory is established.

 

yeah, that's exactly what i hope. there is a wild shadow moving around like crazy, and when it actually collapses it's too late to dodge.

but yeah, i admit it to be very impractical. aluminium is much better. but it feels like cheating...

[Oversleep]

9 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

yeah, that's exactly what i hope. there is a wild shadow moving around like crazy, and when it actually collapses it's too late to dodge.

but yeah, i admit it to be very impractical. aluminium is much better. but it feels like cheating...

Not to mention that your idea isn't really better than the ordinary rifle; I mean, you have to actually aim it at the Seer, so it can't be too random because otherwise it will be just a rifle with insanely bad accuracy making it hard to actually shoot someone. If the randomness area is narrowed, then the obfuscating is really narrowed to the small area, so not as much confusing as it should be.

Also, the atium only shows you about 1 second earlier future, so the shadow would jump around for a very short time (as most of the time of the shadow is after the bullet's been fired and it's trajectory established).

[Yata]

I don't know, to me the random idea can't work.

Atium isn't mind reading where if I made something without thinking of it, my enemy can't avoid it. Atium is (extremely limited) future sight...A Seer may see every shoot with precision a second before it starts. The random factor means nothing in this case. it's like (Very Cosmereless example) if some part of the Seer's mind is in the future and see the attack already shot...then warn the rest of the Mind.

[king of nowhere]

7 hours ago, Yata said:

I don't know, to me the random idea can't work.

Atium isn't mind reading where if I made something without thinking of it, my enemy can't avoid it. Atium is (extremely limited) future sight...A Seer may see every shoot with precision a second before it starts. The random factor means nothing in this case. it's like (Very Cosmereless example) if some part of the Seer's mind is in the future and see the attack already shot...then warn the rest of the Mind.

that is linked to a greater idea: is future written and immutable? And, in general, how does the universe work on a fundamental level?

Because, if future is written, then it is possible to perfectly predict future. And atium should work as you do.

But, if future is not written, then you cannot perfectly predict it. You can make informed guesses. You can calculate. And since a shard is much smarter than a human, a shard can predict the future so well that, at least for a few seconds in advance, the prediction may as well be flawless - except for the case of backwards-influencing loops, which causes paradoxes that make the calculation impossible, hence the multiple atium shadows when two people are burning it. But the future shown is not a predestyned, predetermined future, but only the most accurate calculation/prediction that a shard can make, then something truly random like quantum mechanics cannot be predicted, hence it - and anything related to it - should give many atium shadows.

And i really get the impression that this second case is the correct one. Not only because I always found the "you can't fight destiny" kind of lame, but because it fits with what we know of shardic future sight: a tree of branching possibilities, and the more in the future you go, the more the branching. If there are branching possibilities, it means some events can go many ways. And so what I try to do is simply to generate a lot of truly unpredictable branches, some of them harmful to the atium burner. In fact, I theorize that with the right kind of training/state of mind, where one is actively trying to be unpredictable, it should be possible to split one's atium shadow in a few different ways with the sole power of your capability to make different decisions.

Again, that depends on a fundamental question on how the human mind works: are our brains but very advanced algorithm-sorting deterministic machines, such that in the exact same situation and with the exact same knowledge we would always do the exact same thing? That actually fits well with how atium works, since the only thing that can change the atium shadow is other precognition, which is changing the knowlege that the brain has at the moment of taking the action. Or maybe are we quantum machines, our decision processes depending on a cascade of chemical reactions starting with but a single atom? In that case, we'd still be algorithm-sorting machines, but with a fundamental difference that some real random would be present in our decisions; that would split our atium shadow every time the decision is close enough that one single atom in our brain receptors could make it go either way. That doesn't seem that likely, as it would create random atium shadows sometimes. Or, we have a divine-granted free will that can make decisions that are not deterministically predictable. In which case, while most times our knowledge and skill and personality would lead us to a decision univocally, there would be cases when a person may really take different decisions, and therefore the atium shadow would split. And, given that brandon is religious, and that gods play an important part in his universe, I'd be surprised if this was not the case.

You see, it's surprising how much science and phylosophy can be called into account to answer a technicality on the working of precognition.

Though, I have to admit, the reason I like the random idea that much is that I have my own setting with a magic system with precognition, and that precognition is based on the overlapping of all possible futures, so in that case random is really the best way to counteract it.

[Yata]

@king of nowhere it seems we see the problem in different ways...Maybe I am right, or maybe I am wrong. But to me a "random event" in the timeline is like any other event.

It's like if a famous cat is released from his pretty box and he is fine. Then I return to 2 days before and say "the cat is alive". The event who main kills the cat is a random event but I have a sure anser to the question... Of course in the example I used a long time, but it's the same thing if I see into the box and then I jump back of a couple of seconds to inform (I know that this example isn't perfect because if the cat is dead I can't know when he died).

[Kolfire]

This reminds me of when, in Steelheart the reckoners kill

Spoiler

Fortunity by just shooting him with tons of bullets.

If you are fighting someone with atium you could use the same logic and just push and pull so many objects that no matter how they dodge they are hit by something.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Kolfire
capitalazation and spelling

[happyman]

This is so very tricky, isn't it?  Nice and philosophical and all.

We've actually gotten some insight into how Atium works, thanks to Mistborn: Secret History.

Spoiler

In Secret History, Kelsier, like Elend, gets an overwhelming look at the Spiritual Realm, which includes connections to the past and the future and is the mechanism by which "Shardic Future Sight" actually works.  In fact, at one point they even say that Atium allows Seer's to see into the Spiritual Realm, at least a little.

From this, we can conclude that Atium and Shardic Future sight are one and the same power, but with the first one being much weaker than the second.

We know from other sources (Honor, in particular) that these visions of the future are changing and splitting as things go on.  On the other hand, Atium seems to be completely deterministic for a couple of seconds.

My guess is that even with true quantum randomness, the Atium observer is enough of an observer to see what the effect is going to be after the decay occurs.  The act of the Atium burner seeing what is gong to happen is enough to "collapse the wave function" and make the behavior deterministic.  Of course, this creates the usual future-sight feedback loop, but radioactive atoms don't much care about avoiding a Seer, so I doubt it has any practical effects.

[king of nowhere]

@happyman, that would be a very neat way to wrap it up. Though the upvote is not because I agree with you, but simply because you quoted  correctly obscure modern physics.

It's something someone should ask peter, seeing as how it has potential implications for how the cosmere works at a fundamental level

[happyman]

13 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

@happyman, that would be a very neat way to wrap it up. Though the upvote is not because I agree with you, but simply because you quoted  correctly obscure modern physics.

It's something someone should ask peter, seeing as how it has potential implications for how the cosmere works at a fundamental level

Quantum mechanics is frigging weird when it comes to this kind of thing.  Combine it with Special Relativity and it's quite literally impossible to give a single moment when a wave-function collapses, (or whatever mechanism your favorite interpretation gives of what happens).  All that we can say is that the final result will not violate the order of cause and effect---and Atium completely short-circuits that all by itself.  It would be far simpler to make it work if the Atium burner counts as an observer, seeing the atom's decision before the atom itself knows it has made it.

[asterion137]

what about just moving fast enough that they can't react?

[Yata]

6 hours ago, asterion137 said:

what about just moving fast enough that they can't react?

It was already considerated...But you have to be a lot of faster than the Atium-User to overcome it. Just be a bit faster isn't enough.... Probably a Seer may manage a pewterarm who flares his Pewter.

 

Edited July 7, 2016 by Yata

[Dr. LIFE]

A difficult way to beat an atium burner while also burning atium is to constantly avoid every single atium shadow they throw off. They have to follow one of them so if you avoid all of them they won't hit you. Difficult to exploit this but perhaps possible if you are quick enough. Or have stored mental speed or physical speed. That would help tons.

[Oversleep]

35 minutes ago, Dr. LIFE said:

A difficult way to beat an atium burner while also burning atium is to constantly avoid every single atium shadow they throw off. They have to follow one of them so if you avoid all of them they won't hit you. Difficult to exploit this but perhaps possible if you are quick enough. Or have stored mental speed or physical speed. That would help tons.

Atium shadows constantly vanish and new ones are spawned. Reference: Kelsier teaching Vin about atium.

So there's no guarantee that they'll follow any of the existing shadows.