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> Stealing Monowire
mmu1
post Jun 5 2006, 03:00 PM
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I came across this article: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/m...pper-usat_x.htm

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Skyrocketing copper prices have led to a rash of thefts across the USA of everything from electrical wires to plumbing pipes to vases from grave markers as vandals seek to sell the pricey metal to recyclers.


And was once again reminded of the argument about the sense of putting monowire on the top of a perimeter wall. If there are people out there able to make money stealing copper wire...

I need to have a talk with the other players in our game, and see if we can't re-focus our efforts... We'll steal security systems, never actually breaching the perimeter of the target building. ;)
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Crusher Bob
post Jun 5 2006, 03:01 PM
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Yes, this is also one of the reasons cell phones have more or less taken over the phone market in places like the Philippines. You can put armed guards and a fence around your celluar phone repeater and be pretty sure it won't wander off in the night.
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Wounded Ronin
post Jun 6 2006, 02:08 AM
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Yeah, I always thought how it was pretty ninja you could just steal monowire and make a huge profit. That's why as a GM I would mostly used normal barbed wire.
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Kagetenshi
post Jun 6 2006, 02:32 AM
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Corps in my game use monowire. Corps are also generally not entirely stupid. I'll leave the reader to make the conclusions.

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ShadowDragon8685
post Jun 6 2006, 02:39 AM
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Electrified monowire.
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Voran
post Jun 6 2006, 02:42 AM
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Its pretty bad here in hawaii too. Copper wire and such getting stolen from highway lights, schools. Kinda sad actually.
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mmu1
post Jun 6 2006, 02:54 AM
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QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685)
Electrified monowire.

Nah... It'd never be able to carry enough current to matter - anything meaningful would burn it out, like a lightbulb filament in the open air.
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mmu1
post Jun 6 2006, 02:58 AM
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QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
Corps in my game use monowire. Corps are also generally not entirely stupid. I'll leave the reader to make the conclusions.

~J

Well, where's the fun in putting it indoors, where it'd make most sense? ;)

I can see some common-sense uses for the stuff, but in general, it just seems like such a hassle to set up and maintain... And has a little too much of a D&D trap feel to it for my taste.
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Fix-it
post Jun 6 2006, 03:22 AM
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QUOTE (mmu1)
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Jun 5 2006, 10:39 PM)
Electrified monowire.

Nah... It'd never be able to carry enough current to matter - anything meaningful would burn it out, like a lightbulb filament in the open air.

yeah, but the high-voltage 60 hz buzzing is a nice psychological deterrent.
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toturi
post Jun 6 2006, 04:06 AM
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A burnt out wire doesn't buzz anymore.
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mfb
post Jun 6 2006, 04:18 AM
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i always figured the best use of monowire is in places no one's supposed to go anyway. when the lights go out at night, string a few lines of monowire around the yard. barbed wire is great because it's visible; almost anything you'd use to bypass it will stand out to a casual observer--like, say, a guard on patrol. monowire, though, isn't much use unless its presence and location are not generally known.

and while you couldn't run any serious amount of voltage through a monowire line, you could run enough to detect if it gets cut. there are ways around that, too, of course, but it's one more thing for infiltrators to deal with.
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Kagetenshi
post Jun 6 2006, 06:52 AM
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QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685)
Electrified monowire.

That's one of the best ways to protect the stuff, actually, though probably not the way you're thinking. Put it this way: if a current is running through monowire, and the wire is cut, what measurable thing happens to the current?

~J
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mfb
post Jun 6 2006, 07:20 AM
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it grows an organic jetpack. i'm not going to get into all the scientific details, but it's very true and very scary.
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Slump
post Jun 6 2006, 09:34 AM
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I think the most horrendous use for monowire that I've come up with is actually quite a simple idea. In fact, I can sum it up on one word: Netgun.

Monowire also makes an appearance at any time when you can't easily stop, such as a pit or a vertical shaft (air conditioning or otherwise).

Wide-swath lawnmowers (for very, very large fields) are also made using monowire. Nothing like a lawnmower that's about the same size as a floor buffer being able to mow a path 100 yards wide. Just don't step off while it's running...
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Platinum
post Jun 6 2006, 01:09 PM
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QUOTE (mfb @ Jun 6 2006, 03:20 AM)
it grows an organic jetpack. i'm not going to get into all the scientific details, but it's very true and very scary.

LoL ... so you were the one that got me hooked on Dr. McNinja.

Apparently mimes are will be important in the fight against jetpacks.
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Platinum
post Jun 6 2006, 01:14 PM
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QUOTE (Slump)
I think the most horrendous use for monowire that I've come up with is actually quite a simple idea. In fact, I can sum it up on one word: Netgun.

Monowire also makes an appearance at any time when you can't easily stop, such as a pit or a vertical shaft (air conditioning or otherwise).

Wide-swath lawnmowers (for very, very large fields) are also made using monowire. Nothing like a lawnmower that's about the same size as a floor buffer being able to mow a path 100 yards wide. Just don't step off while it's running...

I was reading a story about grenade slicers. Those would be nasty. Does anyone know what source book they come from? Rounds that fit into a grenade launcher, when fired they split and the two weighted ends separate with a length of monowire floating in between.
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KarmaInferno
post Jun 6 2006, 02:51 PM
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Heck with grenade launchers. There's already bolo-style ammo for shotguns today.

Monowire shotgun bolo rounds?


-karma
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Moon-Hawk
post Jun 6 2006, 05:20 PM
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What a fantastically complicated way to shoot someone.
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mfb
post Jun 6 2006, 05:21 PM
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maybe you could rub the monowire with garlic, so it poisons your targets.
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hyzmarca
post Jun 6 2006, 05:49 PM
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Nah, wooden monowire is best. It causes extra damage to vampires.
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KarmaInferno
post Jun 6 2006, 07:11 PM
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Well, the Frag-12 shotgun round is also a fantastically complicated way of shooting someone too, but it's still being developed.

Back to the grenade thingy, a number of models of fragmentation grenades in the past have used notched wire wrapped around the explosive charge as part of the "fragmentation" part of the device.

Is there any reason you couldn't substitute monowire?


-karma
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Moon-Hawk
post Jun 6 2006, 07:20 PM
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Because monowire, having virtually no mass, has virtually no momentum. It's like throwing a hair at someone to kill them. Monowire, even if we're willing to believe it could exist, still needs to be weighted.
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mmu1
post Jun 6 2006, 07:50 PM
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QUOTE (Moon-Hawk)
Because monowire, having virtually no mass, has virtually no momentum. It's like throwing a hair at someone to kill them. Monowire, even if we're willing to believe it could exist, still needs to be weighted.

It'd also probably melt / burn as a result of the explosion - think of a cobweb exposed to a flame... I'm sure there could be ways around it, but that's just one more strike against an already impractical idea.

And if you weighed it down to make sure it had enough momentum, it'd basically end up being no more effective than a shotgun simply firing a shell full of the weights, since the wire wouldn't penetrate deeper than the weights would.
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Protagonist
post Jun 6 2006, 07:50 PM
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QUOTE (Slump)
I think the most horrendous use for monowire that I've come up with is actually quite a simple idea. In fact, I can sum it up on one word: Netgun.

William Gibson had something like this in All Tomorrow's Parties.

It wasn't monowire, but shot packs of razorwire out. The guy that gets hit with it becomes mush.

I'm honestly surprised that I haven't seen it stolen in a shadowrun book yet.
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mmu1
post Jun 6 2006, 07:53 PM
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QUOTE (Protagonist)
It wasn't monowire, but shot packs of razorwire out. The guy that gets hit with it becomes mush.

I'm honestly surprised that I haven't seen it stolen in a shadowrun book yet.

Actually, IIRC it was something that fired lengths of chainsaw chain, wasn't it? Chain of some kind, anyway... It was basically a sci-fi blunderbuss, if it could've shoot that, it could have fired jagged scrap metal, or a couple of pounds of buckshot, but it wouldn't have sounded as cool.
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