
4 minute read
Exodus — Sandra
the fence. And in worst case, we needed to be able to easily keep them alive and eventually revive them.
An electric fence runs at about 8000-volts — This is to get an electrical current through hide, skin, and clothes to the nerves beneath them. Unfortunately, 8000-volts applied against the human body — with a resistance of about 1kΩ (thousand ohms) — leads to 8-amps of electricity flowing through that body. That amperage is about a quarter of the current that goes to an electric oven, but it is carrying more than twenty-times the voltage. So it might feel a bit like being cooked at 2500 degrees… if you remained conscious after the ‘jolt’ caused all your muscles to contract, your brain to shortcircuit, and your heart to stop.
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The solution to cooking (not) the intruder is to put a limited amount of energy onto the wires. Each wall-container has an energizer which takes its power from a pair of Tesla Powerwalls, supporting about 40-amps of load and able to run a dozen lightbulbs for a day. The energizer puts energy into the wires like they are giant capacitors (storage for energy, like transitory batteries). That stored energy provides the initial shock to an intruder. The energizer also replenishes any lost energy, about once a second. This limited speed of replenishment combined with the capacity of the fence is what prevent it from frying (and worse) the intruder.
So all we need to do is run a standard 8000-volt energizer against the string of wires protecting the container, and any intruder would turnaround as soon as they encountered this obstacle. Except we thought that unlikely. People play with electric fences all the time and learn to handle the shock. The assault team would almost certainly have some kind of protection that increased their resistance. We needed to encourage intruders to turnaround of their own free will, but to disable them if they did not.
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So we tweaked the energizer — It started like normal and replenished the wires once per second, but it doubled the frequency every time the replenishment occurred within the same minute. So once a second would progress up to a thousand times per second if the doubling happened ten times. Doing this ramp within ten seconds seemed a bit draconian, so we gave the intruder a full minute to change their mind: every six seconds it would double. But in exchange for our generosity, the system never stopped increasing frequency until the replenishment was unnecessary: no more energy lost either because the intruder turned around, or they were down for the count. All living team members were warned to stay away from the container-wall during a breach because it could be deadlyhot depending on the behavior of the assaulting team. It was debilitatingly-hot for vampires too, but they would revive and repair eventually.
To add some fun to the defense system, we also blew bubbles at intruders with a misting system. This both made them wet, so the first shocks should be closer to 8000 volts, and because it contained some soap, it made the containers really slippery. Our vampires manning the tops of the containers had super-resistant and supergrippy boots & gloves so they could clamber around on the container tops in spite of these defenses.
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BOARDWALK — MARC
The assault of Boardwalk — was of course at night. This was a horrible time to assault us vampires, but apparently no one was willing to explain that to the assault team. So in the cover of darkness, the assault teams ran at the containers with breaching ladders. They probably had overwatch on the Sports Basement, but those snipers were hidden well enough we couldn’t see them with eyes or cameras. At least they were not shooting at us.
The ladders went up, over the wires, and stopped abruptly. We had made it so cow bell noises played whenever the energizers recharged the wires, and there was now a herd of cattle surrounding us. Admittedly, we hadn’t posted any signs warning about the electric fence, but they could have done a bit more recon before assaulting it with aluminum ladders.
Two teams had luckily used pairs of fiberglass ladders, and they scampered up on top of their containers athletically. Our soapmisters had been running for an hour, but now the fog machines kicked in too. The goal of the mist was to obscure the metal plates functioning as blinds protecting our vampires.
Most of the assault teams went down from the electric wires on the roof of the containers. A few cow bells in a row showed they weren’t initially convinced to vacate, but ultimately only three team members made it to the inner edge, the steel blind, and the vampire… who then turned into a bat… no… who then simply leapt up and tackled the assaulter onto their backs. The wires did the rest. One of the vampires was stunned as well, but the breach was over.
We pulled down the bodies from the roof, checked their pulses, and then laid them out front of the camp, to wake up (or be fetched) sometime after our doors shuffled close. Overwatch kindly didn’t fire a shot in the dark.
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