Pulser bomb squad

[Red Ferring he/him]

I don't know if this has already been stated or if revealed logic of time bubbles contradicts this but I thought of a VERY practical use for Pulsers in the world. SLOW DOWN THAT TIME BOMB!

Brandon has mentioned one of his planned Mistborn series will have a plot with a Misting SWAT-like team tracking a Mistborn serial killer. This sparked the idea for me of a bomb squad and the use of a team of Pulsers being called in to overlap their bubbles over the bomb, effectively multiplying the time left on that bomb.

If the Pulsers all surrounded the bomb in a circle and burned Cadmium, the "outsiders" would have a ton of time to strategize and plan and bring in a bomb specialist or what not. This is of course a stalling tactic but a very useful one when every second counts. And the Pulsers would be spaced so that each member weren't in the effect of the others, so they don't share the same time as the bomb. Or maybe they were in the effect of the other Pulsers's bubbles at either side, but it still wouldn't be nearly as much as all of them overlapping the point in the center of their circle where the bomb was.

Thoughts?

Edited June 2, 2015 by Red Ferring

[KamorianKandra he/him]

That sounds really, really cool.

I seriously hope something like that happens in one of them.

It also makes me wonder if you could make technology that resists investiture.

[Guest]

I had a similar idea a bit back to use a Pulser as a "first responder" (like an ambulance or fire truck). They could "freeze" the burning car/gunshot victim until further help could arrive.

Similarly, a Pulser as part of a shuttle crew could "freeze" damaged panels while the crew isolated the damaged sections.

[Guest]

It also makes me wonder if you could make technology that resists investiture.

Investiture resists other Investiture, so if you built a machine out of filled Metalminds or Hemalurgic "Spikes" it would be very difficult to affect Allomantically

[Red Ferring he/him]

Investiture resists other Investiture, so if you built a machine out of filled Metalminds or Hemalurgic "Spikes" it would be very difficult to affect Allomantically

I don't think the metal would matter in this case as invested metal might resist steel pushes, it's the electronics inside that would keep it going. In this example, the bomb would keep ticking. Well I guess if it were all mechanical and each component were invested.

Huge amounts of invested metal for those purposes would be the perfect opportunity for a less-than-useful Compounding Twinborn to become indispensable as they continuously fill metal with infinite amounts of their trait. Of course the Twinborn's metal would have to work for what they're building.

Edited June 2, 2015 by Red Ferring

[Guest]

Aluminium and Gold are extremely useful for electronic applications, so the wiring itself could be filled.

Depending on how exactly Cadmium and Bendalloy work, simply encasing the device in resistant metal might be enough.

[Red Ferring he/him]

Ok get this... A scene for that future Misting squad during a bomb situation...

The Pulser squad has arrived and has done all they could but find the bomb is encased in aluminum and is immune to the effects of Allomantic time influence. They call in one of their Thugs (a vital component to law enforcement) and a support Nicroburst. It's a risky maneuver but the Thug offers to make himself a human shield when the bomb goes off, relying on the Nicroburst to enhance and burst his pewter at the very last second to absorb the explosion with the Thug's ultra-enhanced body, hopefully impervious to the impact. The clock reaches 0 and BOOM! Nicroburst burns nicrosil and the Thug withstands a massive explosion with the help of all his pewter being burned in a flash. He survives with some 2nd degree burns. Just another day in the life of an Allomancer squad.

[Oudeis he/him]

We got into a long discussion on this subject once. In short, the discussion gets muddied because of the handwavium cadmium requires just to function. If a bomber is aware that pulsers exist, it should in theory be easy to design a bomb with one of any number of possible switches so that if it goes out of time/phase with something else, it simply detonates then and there. The question then becomes, is the handwavium enough to "trick" the electronics of the bomb into thinking it's still in phase? It would require a sophisticated enough interface that the time bubble would have to almost consciously be trying to adapt to the bomb, but frankly, just for the physics to work as well as they do, there's that much handwavium being used.

 

I still maintain that unless there truly is an intelligence adapting to technology, it would not be terribly difficult for a bomb maker to study the phenomenon enough and come up with some mechanism that will instantly trigger in the presence of a time bubble. However, I could be wrong.

[Observer]

Have the bomb receiving signals from someplace else. When the rate of radio signals changes, the bomb goes off automatically because that's a sign of time alteration.

 

I've always kind of wondered if you could get somebody through a wall using time bubbles, without needed to be in line of sight.

[Red Ferring he/him]

Have the bomb receiving signals from someplace else. When the rate of radio signals changes, the bomb goes off automatically because that's a sign of time alteration.

I've always kind of wondered if you could get somebody through a wall using time bubbles, without needed to be in line of sight.

That sounds like a great plot point. Someone write a fanfic! And the twist is that the "good guys" simultaneously put up Cadmium bubbles by the bomb and the guy receiving the signals in order to fool him and buy time.

[natc]

Have the bomb receiving signals from someplace else. When the rate of radio signals changes, the bomb goes off automatically because that's a sign of time alteration.

I've always kind of wondered if you could get somebody through a wall using time bubbles, without needed to be in line of sight.

Light seems to work normally in the bubble without becoming so energized that it incinerates you, so frequency is seemingly somehow unaffected. Even though it should be. Time bubbles are weird.

[Guest]

Light seems to work normally in the bubble without becoming so energized that it incinerates you, so frequency is seemingly somehow unaffected. Even though it should be. Time bubbles are weird.

If the signal is divided into discreet pulses it would work. Ex: "do no detonate" every 3 seconds, if 4 seconds pass without receiving the signal it goes off.

If it was just a constant radio signal, it wouldn't know the difference.

[Observer]

And if that doesn't work physically sending electronic pulses to it really should, though that's way easier to counter.

 

The GRAND TIME LIMIT FACTOR of one of the next books is gonna be a Pulser who is either shot nearly point-blank or thrown off a cliff, and they fire off their powers full-throttle, buying the protagonists precious extra minutes to fight past the Dragon and get to the Big Bad to save their friend before they get slo-mo killed.

 

Edit: I keep misreading Pulser and Pulsar, and it's messing with my head.

Edited June 2, 2015 by Observer

[Oudeis he/him]

Light seems to work normally in the bubble without becoming so energized that it incinerates you, so frequency is seemingly somehow unaffected. Even though it should be. Time bubbles are weird.

 

Basically, this. As someone pointed out in the previous thread, the "interface" seems to be spontaneously generating electromagnetic signals (or, as we think of it, visible light) so that the outside world looks neither dark, nor shifted either red or blue. So one theory is that the interface would actually spontaneously generate the deadman's signal every three seconds inside the bubble, even though that means the bomb will receive more signals than the transceiver ever sent.

 

Like I said. Handwavium makes your head hurt. I still maintain that unless we posit there's actually an intelligence operating the interface, there must be some quirk to the phenomenon that can be used to trip the bomb.

[Curious Anamaximder he/him]

This would work!

[Observer]

Okay then. Use a Southern-Scadrial Stellpush machine as the deadman switch. It's Invested, so it's bound to interact oddly with the bubble. Alternatively, use radio waves but with stops in-between that have to physically move to send the signal to the next one. The delay there is bound to be noticed. In other words, this kind of switch needs some low-tech to go with the high.

 

The counter to all of this would be to mimic the signal within the bubble, but if you can do that, you're already way ahead.

Edited June 4, 2015 by Observer