Grrl Power #363 – Where are they now?
Opal could try opening up a very small portal to slowly equalize the pressure or communicate with a cohort, but of course her cell is closely monitored, and the time it would take for her to decompress is multiples of hours, and they’re not going to let on how many atmospheres she’s experiencing at the moment.
Pressurizing a cell effectively negates several problem powers. Teleportation and portals, as well as phasing. It probably introduces a bunch of other complications, but in a world without alien or magic “Power-B-Gone” tech, or some peculiar substance like vibranium that phasers can’t penetrate (not Star Trek phasers… you know what I mean) you have to start getting creative. Of course there’s the induced coma, but as far as I’m aware there are significant risks to keeping someone in a state like that for an extended period of time. To the best of my knowledge, people can live in a high pressure environment indefinitely, it’s the decompression that’s the dangerous bit. Beyond that I’m not sure how else to incarcerate someone to whom physical barriers are meaningless. Maybe a poison that requires regular antidotes? A shock collar that activates as soon as their powers do is super risky because it would have to incapacitate them before their powers carried them beyond the effectiveness of the collar, and that assumes you can create tech that can determine when a power has been activated and doesn’t knock them on their ass every time they sneeze.
People don’t get to chose their names, and most parents don’t name their children by factoring in the possibility that they will one day become a crime lord, supervillain, or vampire lord, and will therefore need a threatening sounding name. That said there’s probably not a lot of mob bosses naming their first sons Mortimer.
I like the name Kevin for Vehemence because as names go, it’s humorously non-threatening. Apologies to any readers named Kevin who are looking to dominate the MMA world or become despotic dictators or anything. The most intimidating Kevin I can think of right off the bat is Kevin Spacey just because he can play some pretty intense roles, but really if you say Kevin to me the first place I go is Kevin Smith. After that there’s Bacon, Costner, Hart… uh, Nealon, Klein, Pollak… beyond that I’d have to start googling. None of whom really strike fear into anyone’s heart. Most major supervillains tend to have cooler or threatening sounding names; Victor (von Doom) Sebastian (Shaw)… also Sebastian the Crab so maybe that one’s a wash, Lex (short for Alexander Luthor). I try to not play that game when I can, or play against the trope like in this case. Deus is the obvious example of me breaking my own rule there.
This only applies to humans who become supervillains and not guys like Brainiac, Darkseid, Ultron, what have you. When it comes down to it, Brainiac and Ultron were given names by their creators probably with the intention of making them sound cool. Darkseid, well, we pretty much have to take his word that that’s his real name. I mean he might have been born Kevin McGeoghegan, but anyone who questions his current moniker get the Omega Beam express.
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“Darkseid, well, we pretty much have to take his word that that’s his real name.”
It’s not! He was born Prince Uxas, he changed it to sound scarier.
Yeah, that Darkseid origin story was a good read.
Look up Deadman Wonderland. It uses the poison collar concept.
Seen that. Slow acting poison, gotta top up your antidote at most every 3 days or it gets you. Wonder if it keeps working if you remove the actual collar?
*Day 3 without collar* “FREEE! I knew removing that contraption would stop me being poisoned. HA HA HA, who’s laughing now Deadman Wonthefuclksjfoefoijerf *Prisoner dies from poison still in their system…*
Hey I just wanna thank you for not naming him Frank IDK why but but in all forms of media almost every guy named Frank/Francis is either a bully, Crazy, an Asshole or Villain sometimes more then one.
Dont belivee namec3 charicters from anyware named frank that are the hero (and punisher dosent count cause he is BATCRAP crazy)
Frank West, from Dead Rising. He’s a cool guy.
He’s covered wars, you know.
Frank West is a bully to zombies :)
You forgot Father Mulchahy. I dare you to call HIM as asshole to his face. Of course you might end up finding your teeth in the minefield. (Yes I know his name is actually Francis but you get the point)
He was my favorite character on MASH! He’s also probably the best priest character I’ve ever seen on any show.
He is great.
But better than Father Jack, from Father Ted?
:-O
I would say so, but then again I am biased . . . by the fact that I’ve never seen Father Ted.
It was very funny, and well worth watching, if you can find it somewhere. M*A*S*H* is the superior series mind, but they are both classics, so it is not an easy call. They each have their own strengths.
And Francis from Stripes! :)
I personally think they’re lying to Opal. She’s in a normal cell, they don’t want her to know that so they have that speech going in an authoritative voice so it’s believable. Not only does that make it funny, it avoids any and all accusations of cruel and unusual punishment.
They are lying about the “quick and agonizing death” part. Asuming you exhale you can actually survive decompression with quick recompression.
But you loose consciousness in about 10 seconds and trying to hold your breath would be bad. But you can still survive for about 90 seconds:
https://io9.com/5709637/what-would-really-happen-if-you-were-exposed-to-vacuum
You’re thinking of negative pressure (as in vacuum). And yes, the transition from normal to negative pressure is fairly survivable.
Now think instead about positive pressure (as in deep sea diving). The transition from 30 atmospheres (pressure at 300 meters) to sea-level pressure is a lot less survivable.
And if that’s the case, she wouldn’t need to wonder whether it’s true. All she’d have to do is speak, and see whether her voice sounds like Minnie Mouse. If she’s under 30 atm, she’ll get nitrogen narcosis unless they’ve given her a 97% helium atmosphere.
Neon might be used to negate the Micky mouse voice. Or not. Wikipedia at least suggests it might not have a narcosis effect, and it’s denser than air, so it would tend to lower voices.
Hydrox. You risk high-pressure nervous syndrome with helium. She’s on 96% hydrogen and 4% oxygen. No nitrogen narcosis, no oxygen poisoning, no HPNS, the record is a whopping 68 atm, and if you drop much below 4 atm you start to suffocate. No mickey mouse voice, and if you mix it with air and raise the oxygen content, it becomes highly explosive. Fortunately, the overpressure will keep air from getting IN, but Opal’s experiments in de-pressurizing the room could blow up at the other end of the portal. You only need 9 atm to make instant depressurization to 1 atm explosively lethal, but I’d like to think they have her in a deep-diving rig so that she’ll STILL drop more than 8 atm if she portals into a commercial decompression chamber.
I am reminded of a scene from Futurama, paraphrased:
“the water is exerting hundreds of atmospheres of pressure against the ship hull”
“how many atmospheres did you design her to take?”
“Well, it’s a space ship, so between 0, and 1”
Going from 100 to 1 would, paraphrasing from out-of-context, “quickly exceed an individual’s Roche Limit”. We aren’t actually talking about Gravity fields, so no orbital rings would form, but it would still create a mess.
As others have noted many atmospheres to 1 is much worse than 1 to 0.
The whole you explode in a vacuum myth was probably reinforced by an accident in 1983 where a pressure chamber for divers failed and they experienced a drop from 9 to 1atm almost instantaneously. This was fatal and for one of the poor souls did result in him exploding.
Since it came to this, I would like to ask the author to check some information on long-term life in high-pressure environment that may or may not be discussed in the comments, and post a follow-up in the blurb for the next page coming. Like a short Q&A:
Q: How long can a human live in a positive pressure environment?
A: All signs point to “pretty much indefinitely”.
Q: Is it possible to determine if you are under such conditions?
A: If the pressure exceeds 30atm you need special gas content with helium or neon, and that changes the pitch of the voice. Of course, theoretically it’s entirely possible to use a helium-oxygen-neon mix (HONey mix, heh) that doesn’t change the pitch compared to usual.
Q: I don’t think humans, especially comparatively gentle alveoli in our lungs, can withstand high pressures without taking at least some damage. Is it true or not?
A:…Let me get back to you on this.
For the record, the last question is at least partially serious, because I’ve seen on the news once or twice that babies kept in pressurized chambers (likely with heightened oxygen content, due to being not carried to term properly), can have their lungs damaged.
Depends what you mean by “pressure” – profession “saturation divers” do sometimes have neurological effects. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1035367/
I don’t think alveoli would be affected by slow pressure changes.
The second question, the answer is to use a hydrogen-oxygen mix called hydrox, which avoids the neurological effects that Chris mentioned (high-pressure nervous syndrome is a result of helium in the atmosphere) and the change in the pitch of your voice. The correct answer is that if the pressure exceeds 30 atm you need a nitrogen-free mix. Helium, however, can cause HPNS, depending on the individual, so you use hydrogen. Also, the damage to the babies was due to the high-oxygen content, so the third question is yes, humans can withstand long-term high pressure with the proper gas mix. High pressure means more air per breath; hydrox doesn’t contain enough oxygen to use at much below 4 atm, but it was used for the record-holding pressurization of 68 atm. Sustained pressurized hydrox living has no _known_ side effects until you reach a pressure where you experience hydrogen narcosis, which is still theoretical because nobody has ever gone that deep.
On the other hand, mythbusters tested deep sea diving and put a “meat man” into a diving suit then depressurized the suit. Holy CRAP. The entire body tried to squeeze into the helmet and it was just this red mist everywhere that managed to escape from the seals. Oh, and the suit took some crushing damage as well. So opal REALLY needs to stay put.
If Opal tries to escape, she’ll literally go out with a bang…
And her family, if any will have a nice lawsuit or two for the government.
Killed while attempting to break out of our ho,ding facility. Might not have been a drop from the fifth floor onto a razor-wire fence, but the basic situation and results were not dissimilar.
I don’t see the lawyer getting very far, assuming the body is Ever found and identified.
All that will have to be shown is that they put her in a dangerous situation which lead to her death.
It is called depraved indifference.
This is actually true :)
Actually as a lawyer, yeah….her family would have an EXCELLENT case, since she has not been CHARGED with any crime yet during her imprisonment (via deadly countermeasures to imprison her).
ARCON would argue back about the danger she posed but at the very least they have a strong enough case to go to trial.
If she was that big a danger, they should arrest her, then realize they’ll lose at trial and just deal with that, or NOT put the precautions on her, then when she escapes, when they re-capture her, they have one definite charge they can use against her, even if it’s just a misdemeanor or a class E felony, at best (Unlawful Fleeing of Detainment by a police officer). But at least it’ll be something so they can hold her legally without the problem of the Vehemence thing, since she would NOT have been under Vehemence’s influence while in that cell while Vehemence was chilling in Mary Jane’s house.
If they’re lying about the quick but excruciating death…. then that would NOT be cruel and unusual punishment :)
It would certainly be unusual.
Lying isnt considered ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ A police officer can say ‘if you leave, we’re going to have to arrest you’ even if they don’t intend on arresting and are just trying to keep the suspect from leaving. And the suspect can call their bluff, at which point the police either have to arrest them, or let them go. Which is why when a lawyer gets called in, that’s the FIRST thing hey say ‘either arrest my client or we’re leaving, right now.’
Mental anguish perhaps?
… maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe. That’s very arguable though. Plus the government might have defenses for that particular tort under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
I see that MLP is making another cameo, and very distinctly using the First Season Twilight, not the Alicorn Upgraded Twilight. Of course he’s got all the time in the world for a back to back marathon, just choose your episodes carefully. The episode with Tirek is right out.
Oh so very much so. The second half of “A Canterlot Wedding” would be bad.
Basically any two part episode would be bad.
“Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?” might be a good one to not show as well.
Yes but especially Tirek. Don’t want him getting any ideas back in his head, considering his MO and Tirek’s MO were about the same.
Start off lurking in the background, leeching energy from scrubs until you have enough juice to be somewhat respectable.
Once you’re ripped enough to be impressive, recruit an unknowing patsy (Discord/Death Toll) to help gather enough scrubs in one place for you to get enough energy to take on the big game. Don’t forget to help yourself to your patsy once he’s outlived his usefulness.
Endgame: Take on the most powerful superheroines in town (Princesses/Arc-SWAT)
He’s Kevin. Keeevvvvviiin.
https://media.riffsy.com/images/5a5601e719453587e372fa44adebb997/raw
“I got caught by ARC-SWAT and all i got was this Shirt” smooth Dave REALLY smooth
I think it says; “I fought arc-swat and all I got was this shirt” actually.
Still Funny tho’ :D
It should be “..and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”, shouldn’t it?
Yes, “lousy T-Shirt” is the canonical wording.
Can you imagine how much that shirt will be worth at auction when they finally let Kevin out? (i.e. when he dies, probably) It’s not only the first super-villain-specific prison-wear in history (Opal gets a normal orange jail jumpsuit), it belongs to the guy who actually beat the crap out of Arc-Swat. That shirt is going to be like Elvis’ first guitar when Kevin dies.
Iconic plus bonus points for funny.
The auctioneer will be moist with anticipation!
Heh heh heh, well it seems Kevin got a souvenir. Anyone else spot hes wearing a shit that says “I fought Arc-SWAT and all i got was this T-shirt”. Netflix and t-shirts, they treat prisoners rather well.
Doesn’t long term exposure to cannabis have a severe risk of dependency and a higher chance of developing psychosis? Does the possibility of making Kevin a psychotic addict constitute a cruel and unusual punishment?
Depends. In this case, they’d probably have an easy time arguing in court that it’s the most humane way to deal with someone of his power level.
Cannabis? Really? If I was as dastardly as to get my prisoners hooked on drugs, I could at least manage Bayer ™ heroine.
What are you smoking? Did you see Reefer Madness and think that crap was true? Hilarious, but no…all the studies I’ve read show no physical or mental dependencies from long-term cannabis use. Do Cheech and Chong seem psychotic? What about Willie Nelson? Your own body makes several drugs which have MUCH more severe addiction and use consequences even in natural doses, like adrenaline. The worst long-term side-effects he’ll experience are lung damage from smoke inhalation and lung exposure to tar which has potential cancer issues, just like smoking cigarettes. This is assuming that’s smoke, not vaporized cannabis; vaporized cannabis has no known health problems.
There is some credible medical evidence that cannabis use (particularly heavy chronic use) is a causal risk factor for psychosis, for example a large population study at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24200416/ or you can trawl through other (often smaller) studies at, for example, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/?term=marijuana+risk+factor+psychosis
Aww, Vehemence is back into huge nerd cute mode!
Shock collar (or perhaps knock-out drug injecting/homing signal sending) concept is entirely workable, just need to flip the script so to speak and rather than have it activate on leaving the cell, you have it -always- active and only -deactivated- while in the cell. Hence, as soon as they leave, regardless of the range they leave to or how quickly the cover distance, it’s going to trigger if it isn’t getting the suppressing signal which prevents it from doing so. A zap, a poke, sleepy-time and “Hey guyz, pick me up here!” signal and you’re good to go :)
Part of a working solution, but not a full one in it’s current state. Ignoring the practicality of implimenting the system completely.
The biggest problem in this case being that Opal could open a portal to somewhere (say a deep cavern, or evil mastermind complex) which she is familiar with. Ok she is zapped or drugged into unconsciousness, but the signal would not be powerful enough to transmit through rock to Archon. So, when the batteries run out, and the zapping stops, or the drug is metabolised, she then wakes up.
Even easier if she has allies there, to remove the device.
Sure, lots of flaws, not the least of which being supers who aren’t going to be affected by shocks/drugging/etc. It’s just one possible solution.
Of course, in these sorts of cases, information is the biggest preventative tool. What the inmate knows and what reality are don’t have to be the same thing at all. Just telling Opal that she’s in a pressurized bubble and will pop if she opens a portal is probably as large a deterrent to escape as actually having her in a pressurized bubble. You don’t tell the inmate anything you don’t want them to know/believe…such as the range/power/location of the tracking devices they were injected with while sleeping ;)
or in the case of super strength/durability, just rip the damn thing off then go on a rampage inside the prison, freeing other prisoners for a full-scale riot.
It’s evil, of course, but have to read Impulse (the sequel to Jumper)? They use a nerve stimulating implant to control Davy. If ARCHON implanted Opal with one of those, it’d force her to return to her cell or kill her long before it ran out of batteries. Said implants can also be triggered manually, or made to respond to the subject’s breaking a rule (letting information slip, in the book).
I dunno, I’m starting I’m pick this up as a challenge. Depending on how small I could make my portals, that shock collar gets its batteries removed pretty quickly.
Even a physical implant would get gone if you weren’t squeamish about opening a portal into your own body..
If you can do that small and that precise, just do a portal through one section of the collar itself and remove it.
Incidentally, awesome t-shirt on Vehemence :)
How to beat the hyperbaric pressure chamber using portals:
Step one, have a pre-set setup with a helper, a small, sealed, vessel that has a pressure gauge and a sampling port, and a larger hyperbaric chamber.
Step two, open a small portal to the measuring vessel so that your conspirator can measure the pressure and atmospheric composition[1] of the cell. The vessel will be small enough to not cause a detectable change in the cell conditions.
Step three, your conspirator sets your hyperbaric chamber to the appropriate conditions.
Step four, portal to the hyperbaric chamber.
[1] It’s probably simply excess nitrogen but getting that wrong could be a nasty surprise.
And if she gets out, I’m sure she’ll spend the thousands of dollars to have this set up and standing by at all times.
If she’s going to die a quick and painful death, she’s at a minimum of 9 atm, and you get nitrogen toxicity at 30 atm. If she does get out, and they aren’t doing this already, her second stay will probably be in a deep-diving rig at 39 atm or more and breathing a nitrogen- and helium- free mix (meaning Hydrox, 96% hydrogen and 4% oxygen), helium-free due to the danger of high-pressure nervous syndrome. A commercial chamber won’t be able to handle a high enough pressure for her to jump to without dying, and hydrox is both expensive and easy for ARC to keep an eye on purchases of. Her old setup will be useless, and if they put her in a deep-diving rig the first time and she managed to acquire one and the hydrox for it, they’re rare enough that ARC will know exactly where it is…and she can’t leave until depressurization, plenty of time for ARC to recover her.
One question. Doesn’t Hydrogen + Oxygen + pressure + spark = BOOM ?
Yes, but if you keep the oxygen percentage low enough it’ll be stable – there’s just not enough to maintain the fire in any one place.
If the high-end gear is pre-acquired, the only paper trail would be some insurance claims.
Also, depending on her range it might not be too useful to know where her escape chamber is: She starts by doing some favours for, say, Kim Jong-un in exchange for a place for her gear.
Workable. And communicating with a conspirator is a lot easier for someone with portals!
Didn’t read all the comments so I don’t know if it’s been proposed. Wouldn’t oxygen toxicity be a problem for a pressurized cell? I know regular humans can only go about 140m below sea level before too much gas dissolves in their blood stream. That’s about 14 times atmospheric pressure.
I am not a diver, but my impression is that oxygen supply is based on partial pressure – if overall pressure increases, then the actual percentage of oxygen in the air that is needed goes down.
Yeah, you use a specialized atmospheric mix with a lower oxygen content than air. The reason is that pressurized atmosphere contains more gas per breath. At lower pressures, this can be compensated with shallow breathing, but at high enough pressure you switch to a lower-oxygen mix. The mix you’re switching to and your personal comfort dictate at what depth you switch, since you’ll suffocate at normal pressure on a low-oxygen mix.
It would be a problem, at the appropriate pressures. But not if they supply a suitable gas mix. Some combinations will have deleterious effects on long-term health. Others will be less problematic.
So it may turn out that she is ok at certain lower pressures (normal air), not ok at others, due to the mixes only being safe for shorter durations, but, at still other pressures, different gasses can be used, which may not have such serious problems. Other threads are discussing this in detail.
Long term high pressure has its own medical issues too, but, like those of astronauts living on space stations, they can have countermeasures to try and alleviate the symptoms.
Do I take it that Kevin is getting happy-drugs in the atmosphere he’s breathing? Or is that the reference in the comments to marijuana? (Fumes vs smoke, factor in the happy, and the munchies…)
Hence the crack at the bottom about how the security is “baked” in. : p
Either is workable, and would not contradict what we see. But the gag is certainly implying marijuana, as you picked up.
Opal’s Escape Attempt #1
Check to make sure the only foreign object is the collar (see panels 4 &5, since no one has mentioned she’s actually wearing one). If there are hard spots that are sore or numb, abort the escape; they’ve violated your rights and a godd lawyer will get you out.
Port across the room and see what the collar does; if nothing it can wait, if it reacts use several portal edges simultaneously to cut it off.
Open a pinhole portal to Death Valley; if the airflow is into the room they’re either lying or they haven’t raised the pressure significantly (cut the collar and leave); if the airflow is out from the room you need to get serious.
Open a pinhole in the ocean, driving it down until water flows in (if you don’t automatically know how deep it is, mark the spot for a depth check later). Now open a portal a foot wide
you opened a portal at the depth wear sea water flows in.
Fine it does so till it fills half the room (minus objects)
it then stops flowing in due to compression the super pressurized air is not at an even higher PSI
And ARC responds because sensors indicate a ~1 atmosphere pressure increase.
Opal then develops hypothermia because of the sub-zero temperature of all this salt water she is submerged in, I did not see her fly or levitate.
/science!
Please read the rest, below…
A steady diet of MLP and Kirby would inspire me to violence despite the atmosphere of marijuana smoke.
The pressurization idea is clever. Here are a few more:
Anyone with ‘normal’ powers that didn’t include the ability to fly could just be suspended above a nasty drop in a cell with floors that break away if the walls are pounded on too much. If they compromise the integrity of their cell they drop into something that can incapacitate them. Like the cells are inside a room that has enough CO2 to drop them before they get too far, or a big vat of goo that hardens when too much force is put against it, and also feels and smells really gross.
One assumes that the succubus inventor can be tapped to create specialized cells on a case by case basis. Maybe in addition to the pot smoke Vehemence is getting daily visits from her to uh… Drain his vital maleness.
People with objects of power like Sydney are easy, just separate them from their toys.
Here’s a thought though. How would you incapacitate Maxima? For all intents and purposes, she’s Superman without the Kryptonite. Best idea I can come up with is comaville using a gas, since she does need to breathe, and in her case it probably wouldn’t kill her.
It’s either that, or put her in one seriously expensive vault at the bottom of one of those 2km deep mines in Ontario. You’d need a multi-multi-multi million dollar prison complex just to hold her alone. There’s got to be a point where the concept of cruel and unusual gets cast aside to merely contain a superhuman.
How would you incapacitate Maxima?
Welcome Maxima! Before you do anything, please realize the cell has multiple breach sensors of various types; no, you don’t get to know the types or how sensitive they are, but normal human actions won’t set them off. They are linked to an atomic weapon right next to the cell. Yes, this is underground so it doesn’t hurt anyone else. If you think you can outrun the electrical signal and the subsequent bomb explosion, please feel free – explaining the explosion would frankly be cheaper than keeping your containment up for an extended period.
Except Maxima might gamble on her durability, rather than be an extended guest. However, move that bomb to a generic small town, and you now have hundreds if not thousands of hostages who’s life is subject to her good behavior.
You put something that exerts pointy pressure on her at near the limit of her armor around her neck that she cant remove with her remaining strength. If she switches to strength to get rid of it she loses her head. Electricity may have to be involved to prevent some combo of strength and speed shenanigans.
If her limits are classified, that means they are known…in theory. Vehemence already showed us how to incapacitate Maxima: put a pressurized shock collar on her exerting enough pressure and electricity that she has to max out her armor to survive the electrocution. Now repeat with wrists and ankles and shackle her to a wall, or if you want to save some money just put a big heavy electrified thing on top of her entire body except her head. Feed her through a straw.
Basically, just force her to max out armor with electricity and then use restraints she can’t break. It would be super-illegal if she were a civilian, but she falls under the UCMJ (Unified Code of Military Justice), and technically they can execute her as a traitor if she turns criminal. The real problem is CAPTURING Maxima.
In Ian Thomas Healy’s “Just Cause” superhero book series, supervillains are kept in an underground ultra-security prison called “Deep Six”. Even that facility has flaws that can, and were, exploited in the book by that title: https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Just-Cause-Universe-Book-ebook/dp/B00GYBPZZY
I recommend the Just Cause series, along with the Wearing the Cape series by Marion G. Harmon.
They are showing him G4 mlp. Apparently they never bothered to watch it beforehand.
Also, what if Discord reached through the screen and decided to break him out for the chaos? We already know that he can reach into other realities from “Make New Friends But Keep Discord”.
And how are they going to get the people in the high-pressure chambers out? What if they need to evac the place for some reason? What will happen to those prisoners then?
I don’t think Discord would do that. It would up set Fluttershy.
Finally, someone raises a valid point about the pressure chamber with no easy answer: how do they get people out quickly?
Nearly naked and with just one body, Harem could just barely teleport with the Barrett, which weighs about 30 pounds, so she can’t evac Opal. The best answer is that ARC-Aegis has a duplicate pressure chamber at a secondary site, and Opal evacuates HERSELF…into an identical cell.
The real problem is if Opal needs medical attention, especially from the super-doc (forget her name). Ideally, medical attention is administered through waldos, which obviously aren’t in her room. Maybe there are waldos in the outer airlock door, and they can pressurize the airlock, open the inner door, and administer mundane medical attention. Maybe they have remote waldos on a medical robot they can send in. If the doc’s special powers are needed, though, the doc has to go through decompression… and that’s going to take a lot of hours. It depends on the pressure they’re keeping Opal at, but if it’s enough for lethal explosive decompression, safe decompression is going to tie up the doc for a while. Potentially, upwards of a day. Given her unique position and the possibility of a time-critical response being required of her, that’s super-bad.
Of course, if Opal does something stupid in an escape attempt, I don’t think ARC is legally obligated to provide more than mundane healthcare. For the doctor to not violate the Hippocratic oath, she need merely remain uninformed. If waldos weren’t built in, and robots are not available, then the on-site medical staff pressurizes quickly, goes in, treats Opal, and leaves after decompression.
Evacuation of teleporters is really easy as long as they can teleport to places they can see and aren’t unconscious, though: just show them a picture of their backup cell.
Actually she only had to “Store” one body and remove her boots. With only one active body and naked she can take 50lb.
The doc can enter the high pressure area fairly quickly – in the order of minutes – and treat her. It’s the decompression that’s a problem, not the compression. So as long as you can afford to have the doc decompress afterwards, they can rush in quickly.
What happens if the decompression room is disabled though?
*Via EMP or somesuch so that it’s still present, just nonfunctional.
@&(@$ twitchy pad…
Open a portal a foot wide and about 10 feet deeper pointed at the tv. Let the water short the room electronics and fill the room to a foot or so in depth (your ears will pop). If the water continues to rise when you stop, they’ve started depressurization; remove the collar, lie back, relax and open a portal from inside your mouth to a spot on the ceiling (they’re GOING to gas you, and you want fresh air as long as possible). If they don’t depressurize, do this over and over until they do (they CANNOT afford to allow you to die in custody).
If you are still conscious when they open the door, leave (you may suffer some ill effects). If not, you may wake in transit, again leave. If you wake in another cell, start over; you can do this till they run out of pressurized cells…
I think you’re making a false assumption here when you say that they cannot let you (the interned villain) die. I’d think they’d be fully willing to let the interned villain die under the right set of circumstances, especially if the alternative is an escaped, extremely dangerous super powered villain.
Plus, PR wise they might basically just lay the blame on the villain. After all, if they hadn’t tried to escape, they wouldn’t have died. Not too mention, they’re a villain. I don’t think there’d be a whole lot of people (some yes) who would feel a whole lot of sympathy for the villain.
I mean, heck, if what the ARC voice in the cell claims is true, then they’ve put her in a pressurized cell that WILL likely kill her if she tries a serious escape attempt. That alone says that ARC IS willing to let her die in custody under some set of circumstances – although, if she is attempting to escape, does Opal count as “in custody” anymore anyways?
They have already shown they are willing to pump exotic gasses into the room. So you flood the room, the automatic dead man trigger goes off when the power shorts. The room is filled with drugs to knock her out cold. Assuming she doesn’t drown accidentally while they try to send in people to get her, this time, she is put in a drug induced coma until trial.
And all charges dismissed do to violations of her civil, constitutional, and possibly human rights.
Sorry for the disjointed escape attempt. Brushed “Submit Comment” by accident while correcting something and the rest didn’t post as “Reply” for some reason.
The point of all this is: keeping a teleporter in custody and conscious, without committing several serious crimes in the process is fiendishly difficult; and portal makers are the hardest of the lot.
The law as we have it must necessarily work far differently in a world with supers.
Teleporters would be very hard to keep confined. If Opal is crazy prepared, or is teamed up with someone crazy prepared, she may already have pressure chambers available for herself. Assuming this is the case, she’d somehow need to gauge how much pressure she was under before porting out.
If she knows someone with sorcery or healing powers, she could risk a port to their location in hopes that they could preserve her life. Vehemence himself fits the bill, but he’d need to have a charge built up. Not that she’d be inclined to trust him anymore.
Any experimentation with portals in the room would certainly be quickly noticed. A facility that operates with multiple atmospheres of pressure would also require fail-safes and alarms to notify the operators in case it began to lose (or gain) pressure.
Yes, interpretations need to be re-analysed in the light of changing circumstances. And new laws may be needed to cover situations for which there was no previous analogy. *
No, the basic laws must work on exactly the same principles. Truth, justice and fairness all operate independently of the existence or non-existence of super powers.
* The more we discuss such, in these comments, the clearer it becomes that existing laws cover pretty much most things. When you look at the principles, and apply common sense if there is no simple match (for instance also considering vehicular law if a super can emulate a vehicle by some means).
It’s a matter of scale, Yorp. Minor super criminals would be treated similarly to regular criminals. If a super is an existential threat to the planet, and cannot be safely contained, how could anyone approach something like due process?
From basic principles. You apply the same rules that, for example, police snipers have to:
• Is the suspect posing a clear and present danger to anyone?
• Would issuing a warning risk loss of life? (Say due to lack of time)
• Do we have the means to counter the threat by non-lethal means?
• If not are there less-lethal means available?
• If not are there lethal remedies?
• If so, can they be deployed in these circumstances?
• If so, is are the risks of attempting to kill them greater than the threat they pose?
All of these apply to a human threat as well as a super human one. Scale just makes the stakes higher. It may change the means. But not the moral or legal process.
No, keeping a teleporter in custody, conscious, and in a position to survive an escape attempt is fiendishly difficult. Assuming the voice is telling the truth, she is not in a position to survive an escape attempt. If they’re willing to let her explosively decompress during an escape attempt, they might be willing to let her freeze herself. It’s called suicide.
omg that is perfect
*sees Aegi’s ‘state-of-the-art’ containment*
*uncontrollable laughter*
Now pass the doritos =P
Oh God, Kevin would be a great streamer… Just high all the time and playing kiddie games.
Help subsidize the costs of incarceration!
Kevin/Vehemence likes Kirby? And ponies? And Doritos???
C’mon. Clearly he can’t be that bad a guy. Consider me officially switching over to Team Vehemence now.
Actually, I can think of a method of escape for Opal, but without practice and careful planning she’d probably still die in the execution.
This is assuming she can create portals outside of her field of view (which the containment unit suggests, otherwise she’d be hard pressed to escape a normal non-transparent cell.) and assuming she has fairly precise control over where she creates the portals.
She can probe the area around her by creating tiny, pinprick, portals and seeing what’s on the other side (the flow is too low to quickly affect pressure). Once she finds water, she can move the portal down until she hits a depth were the pressures cancel.
She can then safely open a portal to the water at that depth. This opens a way out. Now she needs to find a way to supply her with pressured air while she decompresses underwater. She can of course use her cell as air container, but that would quickly be noticed.
Not air. It’s highly likely that she’s on an exotic atmosphere mix and at a pressure high enough that air would kill her, pressurized or not…and pressurizing the air is extremely difficult. Of course, the obvious solution is to open a portal from her mouth back to her cell, but that risks ARC going into her cell and putting a tracker down her throat.
The real problem with your method is that Opal would freeze to death at that depth of water.
Opal could probably just depresure her chamber safely by controling a few smaller portals that lead out.
If they’re monitoring her they’re probably also checking the pressure inside her cell. So any changes in pressure will be noticed and security measures will be activated.
They are. The fist paragraph of the author’s blog, above, covers that.
Reporter: “General, what is your plan for detaining the prisoners?”
General: “Netflix and chill” *puts on sunglasses*
…
…
YEAHHHH!!!!!!
Okay, practical question: What’s the practical range on Vehemence/Kevin? Does his vehemic power soak up: only violence he is close to and personally witnesses, any violence in his immediate area witnessed or not, is it capable of absorbing power from violent acts on the other side of a barrier? How far away before he stops charging up from it?
If he has enough range, I could see him treating this whole thing as just a THC/MLP/NES couch vacation until he recharges… then it’s round two.
It varies, depending on how much of his power is being siphoned off by his Evil Squirrel Overlord.
Vehemence got a lot more powerful after the furry varmint was driven off, by Budget Halo’s anti-squirrel rampage.
If i remember correctly his range increases with his power level so right now he would only very stronger if he was hit
Double post, but a separate topic. Has anyone else noticed that his arm, eye, and teeth are all now back to normal?
I’ve noticed — and expected it, actually. Vehemence was in perfect condition prior to his direct engagement with ARC-SWAT. Since his powers feed on violence, it only made sense if he was able to restore himself, somehow.
In the last comic of the fight, DaveB said that he wanted to show V shrinking back to normal size and the metal falling off to reveal normal flesh underneath, but ran out of panels, so “pretend you saw that happen” to paraphrase WoG.
Feel free to post as often as you want. We welcome all useful comments.
The high pressure thing for the portal maker chick is very clever. People who live in “deep sea” enviroments can last a long time at several atmospheres of pressure and would die of nitrogen bubbles if they didn’t depressurize gradually. I think it checks out. The “stoner” gas solution would only work for a while, you’d have to keep increasing the dosage constantly because the individual would develop tolorance. A habitual stoner can take huge amounts of THC without much effect. It would probably only take about a month of constant usage for that supervillain to essencially become immune… then he’d be able to still make an escape strategy. Though to be fair, you really only need to keep your personal out of his effective range, and use robots to interact with him to prevent him from really getting strong enough to pose a threat.
immune is probably the wrong word, I mean, you still get high, your brain just gets used to it and is able to function at a slightly reduced “normal” level of intelligence.
I’ve known some of those people.
The word “slightly” is misused here.
You also only really need to drug him while he depowers from a fight, or while there is a chance he might try to use his powers on others. The cell can hold him at ‘normal’ power as long as he doesn’t have any way to power up.
So in a couple of days – once his collection of energy from the brawl has worn down – they can drop the smoke unless they actually need someone to enter his cell with him, in all likelihood.
What they need to do is work with dabbler and her gadget looking friend there to prefab cells based around the most common power types and theorycraft the more rare ones. Knock up some plans so they can quickly assemble a cell designed to keep a humanoid ball of lasers with wings contained and attach it to the modular prison. That way even if you dont have the precise style of cell needed, you have one on file thats pretty darn close and can be put together quickly. Hopefully before whatever containment method you are using (such as knockout drugs) wears off.
I say make it modular so you can mix and match pieces as needed. This flying brick has sonic energy projection as well? You can slap in a sound canceling device inside the cell and make him watch muted movies with captions all day. The human torch is ready for his cell? Add in the fireproof paneling to the whole shebang. Atomic bombshell? Heavily reinforced bunker fully enclosed and warn her about what a contained explosion will do to her. She may be immune to her own explosive force, but the psi from the blast wave will be ugly. Even if it turns out the pressure doesnt collapse her internal organs in alphabetical order, she is buried underground and collapsing the cell wouldnt end well for her either.
Very sensible.
Bonus points for suggesting Dabbler’s companion, who can actually do stuff like this. And in that context Dabbler might assist, if it is simply applying human technology and her lending a hand (or four) to that end. If she is asked to make things that require alien technology or magic though, she will refuse. Dabbler has made clear several times that humans are too immature to be trusted with that.
Presumably her friend may be a super-gadgeteer and thus able to exceed current human technology. Failing that though, the story has so far kept strictly to existing technology, or within reasonable boundaries (such as the pip-boy and HUD glasses).
With the exception of Kevlar 2.0. But that is only made by the application of a specific super power. As opposed to being a new item of technology that any factory can make.
Likewise the page above does not introduce anything that does not already exist in society. It just uses it in interesting new ways!
Doubtless there will be new innovations though. Especially if super-powers inspire breakthroughs. So some extraordinary devices may pop up. But most, for the time being, are likely to be mundane (if cutting edge) technology.
However the whole modular pre-fabrication and adaptability angle is a very good one and a commendable idea.
Something to keep in mind is, the super inspired breakthrough is absolutely certain to happen. Why? Because think about it. How can they test their newest super heroes powers if they cant contain them to measure them? They HAVE to be able to create materials that can take a super punch, or an energy blast, or whatever, or else they cant measure it. People like maxima may break the scale, but they need to know how hard hiro can punch, or how much energy jiggawatt can unleash. So by developing ways to test all that stuff, they are also developing ways to block it. And of course keeping the super brains handy to figure out ways to deal with the unusual powers like opal and vehemence that they dont already have to study.
True. Bear in mind though that just because there is a need for something, does not necessarily mean there is the means to actually produce it. And there is also the time delay to factor in. Testing and implementing new technologies takes a long time. Especially for big things like these prison cells need to be. Want to know how long, in the real world?
Twenty years.
Yes, things can be done faster, but that is the measured time it takes in reality, on average. In between the initial nobel-prize winning idea, and something being common in society.
Most of which being due to social inertia. “Yes, we can build an entire new rail network, but that would cost millions (or billions). And the old one is working ok. Lets let our successors worry about that, when the repair costs get high enough to require a complete overhaul.”
The fact that eager young bunnies would love to commute to work on maglev trains does not stop that inertia. The obvious exception to this is our rate of progress in information technology. So do not let the gadgets in your mobile phone fool you, when analysing my statement. Look at the rest of the infrastructure.
Do we have flying cars? Fusion power? Bases on the moon? Mind you we are starting to see robots, and self driving cars. Their twenty years are up. And then some.
Of course things will happen faster in a world with the threat of super villains helping to spur things on though. So I only say the above out of interest, rather than to dampen comic world inventiveness.
There is also the fact that supers in government has been a reality for generations now, so its not like they started research last week or something. They have probably already been working on developing these super prisons and other such things for those twenty years or so. Its just that now they are ready to go public with it. I guess the number of supers is increasing to the point where it is needed.
Flying cars is easy, its the problems that USING flying cars would create thats a problem. Hell, I wrote up some loose blueprints for turning a motorcycle into a short distance jet plane. The issue wasnt that it couldnt be done or had to be designed, its the sheer scale of death and destruction a bunch of random schlubs without extensive training flying around crashing into things at really high speeds would cause. Of course, inertia is a problem too, but just as much is corporate interest. Big Oil doesnt want some upstart to develop a source of energy as effective and abundant as theirs because that would cost them billions of dollars, so they spend millions to “encourage” slow downs on research and approval for things that would advance alternate capabilities.
But when it comes to supers, inertia isnt a real big deal because there isnt much of a “eh its good enough” solution already in place yet, and no corporate inertia because this is a new field, not one that already exists and would stand to be ruined by its replacement. In fact, with people like deus, its probably being pushed harder so they can START making vast profits from it.
All good points, and well expressed. :-)
Kevin?
Scary!
In some versions Brainiac is an organic being not an AI so in those versions he picked his own name.
I think you’re making a false assumption here when you say that they cannot let you (the interned villain) die. I’d think they’d be fully willing to let the interned villain die under the right set of circumstances, especially if the alternative is an escaped, extremely dangerous super powered villain.
Plus, PR wise they might basically just lay the blame on the villain. After all, if they hadn’t tried to escape, they wouldn’t have died. Not to mention, they’re a villain. I don’t think there’d be a whole lot of people (some yes) who would feel a whole lot of sympathy for the villain.
Whoops. Please ignore this, I didn’t hit the reply button correctly.
That happens if you fail to give it regular beatings. Install discipline in it. It must recognise you as its master!
Note that this technique only applies to modern technology, not to animals. They respond better to kindness than cruelty.
PR-wise, if a villain dies during an escape attempt from security devices they are aware of, as opposed to human intervention, it’s called “suicide”.
I’m a bit surprised, when Kevin mentioned and showed he could regenerate, I was under the impression he would stay with the metal looking stuff. Not get human parts back.
You are surprised about something that a man who can turn anger into pants can do?
Ignoble points out where DaveB’s explanation is: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1881/comment-page-1#comment-391180
Bone marrow necrosis is one potential long-term effect of being under pressure … aww, who cares?
Astronauts suffer bone atrophy when living in micro-gravity for extended periods. We feed them food supplements and give them exercise regimes to help mitigate it. I am sure similar things will be done for Opal.
And, if it looks to be endangering her life, other alternatives will be considered. This however is a brilliant solution which has contained the uncontainable, for the time being. Long enough for it to be viable to tried, without a serious risk of escape.
If anybody can suggest a less-lethal and equally (or more) moral alternative, that stays within the bounds of existing technology, I would be interested to hear it. And if it is a good one, you might find that it appeals to DaveB and finds its way into the comic!
“Long enough for it to be viable to tried” should read “Long enough for it to be viable for her to be tried”
You know, this page, where ARC uses specialized knowledge of the super’s powers to create workable containment methods reminds me of a creepy pasta wiki. In the wiki specialized containment methods are created to contain anomalous objects based on precise knowledge of that object’s effects. The wiki is called the SCP Foundation (WARNING! Clicking this link may cause you to lose several hours of your day, similar to if you clicked a link to TV tropes).
The wiki is written in the form of Special Containment Procedures, clinical documents that give a brief description of the object and its effects, as well as how to contain it (and often background information such as how the object was first discovered and/or acquired).
It’s interesting in how often common methods (and sometimes anomalous, using other anomalous objects or effects to aid containment) can effectively contain an entity, as well as being a good read to boot (at least the more upvoted articles).
Note however, it IS creepy pasta, which means that the SCP universe has a very grim dark feel to it. Well, except for entries like SCP-420-J. I think Vehemence in his current situation would really enjoy 420-J. =P
As it turns out, a member of their staff is a fellow commentator.
I love how this kind of thing is cropping up, due to the growing readership of the comic!
If I was Opal my exit strategy would involve two lawyers: one for the criminal charges, and the other for the medical malpractice suit that I’d drop as soon as the criminal charges were.
Unfortunately, I’m sure they fall under the rules concerning “terrorists”. In America, the president can point at anyone, say terrorist, and then you no longer have any rights and you vanish. Dead serious. These guys? I’m sure they are being treated as Terrorists until they can sort things out. And While you are a terrorist, if they happen to torture the crap out of you and you, I dunno, accidentally lose, say, YOUR EYES. You don’t get to sue. You had it coming.
The “Freedom” Act is a BITCH.
I don’t even want to imagine what a world with supers would have if the REAL WORLD has draconian laws like what we got here in the US.
Wow. Um.. no offense (really, not trying to start a fight or anything) … but you don’t seem to know the law that you’re talking about.
The Freedom Act (I’m assuming you mean the USA Freedom Act of 2015) mainly is about authorization of roving wiretaps (which had originally ended when the Patriot Act ended) – there’s NOTHING in there about torture or losing eyes and preventing lawsuits for that. I mean… I’m not a fan of roving wiretaps and using metadata, but all the law is doing is telling the procedures by which roving wiretaps are allowed, using metadata, etc. Not torture. NOTHING to do with torture. Not to mention it deals with people who are identified specifically as enemy combatants to the country, not just any criminal engaged in a violent crime.
Lets assume, for the time being, that they are being treated as terrorists (which they are not being treated as, since you’ve already seen some of them being let go immediately). It doesnt do anything that you’ve claimed. At all. Please read the laws that you’re criticizing first. Even the Patriot Act (which already expired) did not say what you’re claiming. And the part about the US being the country with the most draconian laws? That is … I have no words for how much is wrong with that sentence.
(btw, before I’m attacked for being an ultra-conservative warmonger or whatever – I’m a Libertarian)
Actually, while he has the name of the law wrong, and the term is “enemy combatant”, not “terrorist”, and torture is STILL illegal, you DO lose a lot of civil rights, including the right to an attorney, the right to a speedy trial (which in reality means being held indefinitely without trial), and a lot of other things. The trick is that I believe such people have to be held off American soil, which is why G-Bay is in Cuba. There are still ‘black holes’ that the American government sticks people in.
While many of the people are being let go, some are imprisoned, and we don’t know that the ARC-Aegis facility is on American soil…
However, the Voice told Opal that her case is being reviewed, so she’s going to trial, albeit she’ll be attending via webcam. The biggest reason not to make any of these people ‘disappear’ is PR, and we all know how Arianna feels about PR.
…. No, you don’t. Again. The Patriot Act has EXPIRED. The only part of it which hasnt, the Freedom Act, only covers wiretaps and metadata.
It has NOTHING to do whatsoever with torture (which btw is not legal, although they claimed waterboarding was not torture, it was ‘enhanced interrogation,’ because it was designed to not actually physically harm the person – although honestly this is BS). But it’s a moot point as there is no law saying ‘btw, torture is legal.’
Although the reason it’s in Cuba is not because ‘torture is allowed in Cuba’ but rather because it can’t be on American soil without arguments being started about if they are then going to be given civil rights of american citizens (which in this case they definitely WOULD be, since the supers ARE american citizens, unlike G-Bay).
Oh, it’s unlikely that it’s not on american soil, since the detained people are American citizens, not foreign combatants. :)
I agree with the last paragraph you wrote btw. But with the added caveat of ‘they won’t make them disappear because they’re the good guys.’