Remote Stalling of Automobile Engines
InterSoft1
expo. One of the new devices which was said to be "available," was one
which, the report claimed, would allow police to aim at a fleeing supect
and seize or stall his engine.
This sounds rather far-fetched to me. Is it possible? Has anyone heard
about this?
Peter Johnston
Michael Covington
: I recently saw a news review of a recent law enforcement "technology"
I just saw it in the latest Electronics World (from London). It requires
a special radio-controlled alarm and shutdown device to be installed on
the car.
--
< Michael A. Covington, Assc Rsch Scientist, Artificial Intelligence Center >
< The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-7415 USA mcov...@ai.uga.edu >
< Unless specifically indicated, I am not speaking for the University. > <><
> "To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see them." -C.S. Lewis <
Pat Niemeyer
>InterSoft1 (inter...@aol.com) wrote:
>: I recently saw a news review of a recent law enforcement "technology"
>: expo. One of the new devices which was said to be "available," was one
>: which, the report claimed, would allow police to aim at a fleeing supect
>: and seize or stall his engine.
>: This sounds rather far-fetched to me. Is it possible? Has anyone heard
>: about this?
>I just saw it in the latest Electronics World (from London). It requires
>a special radio-controlled alarm and shutdown device to be installed on
>the car.
I think this is about the funniest post I've seen here in a long time ;)
Pat
Jim Pieronek
I worked on engine controls for Generous Motors in the mid '80s.
While I was there we got this strange complaint about several cars
(Oldsmobiles with a particular engine) stalling out at the same spot
on a road in Miami. They sent a couple of engineers down there and
they got hold of these cars and found that the engine computers were
going bonkers at this one spot. They called in the FCC and they found
some ding-dong running a pirate radio station out of a hotel a few
hundred feet from the stalling spot. They yanked the plug on that guy
and the problem went away.
So yeah, it's possible, but it would be difficult to nail every car.
The radio station in this case only dissabled engines with a
particular engine computer and wiring harness.
Of course you could EMP them, but that has other drawbacks.
--
===================================================================
Jim Pieronek Phone: (505) 243-5822
Member of Technical Staff FAX: (505) 243-5823
M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory Internet: j...@ll.mit.edu
P.O.Box 9530
Terminal Radar Development Facility
Albuquerque, NM 87109
Silas E. Cheeseman
>mcov...@ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) writes:
I think the EMP from a smal nuclear device would do it. :-)
From: nbs...@mailserv.nbnet.nb.ca
Saint John, NB, Canada
"He will wipe away all the tears from their eyes"
- Revelation 21:4
Kris Heidenstrom
InterSoft1 <inter...@aol.com> wrote:
> I recently saw a news review of a recent law enforcement "technology"
> expo. One of the new devices which was said to be "available," was one
> which, the report claimed, would allow police to aim at a fleeing supect
> and seize or stall his engine.
This sounds pretty clever.
What would be _really_ useful, though, would be a unit which remotely
_prevents_ the engine from stalling.
It would be just what my car needs :-)
Kris
--
Kris Heidenstrom kheide...@actrix.gen.nz Wellington, New Zealand
"Destroy 99% of known household pests with pre-sliced, rustproof, easy-
to-handle, low-calorie Simpson's individual Emperor Stringettes ..."
Frank Hausman
car, and a remote controllable EMP generator in the road. EMP
generators have been around for years, used usually around missile
ranges to test military avionics and guidance systems. The principal
is to use every wire coming out of a device ( a electronic ignition,
say) as antennae through which massive currents can be pumped into the
device. Of course automotive electronics are protected to some extent,
given the metal car body, ESD protection on ignition transistors and
so forth, but the total energy (help me out here, physics people)
required to be suppressed for a computer to work under the hood of a
car is miniscule compared to the total energy available from a
high-energy-release chemical battery driving a explosively collapsed
electromagnetic rail gun. Finally a useful spinoff from the arms race.
Note from a friend: A typical YAGI T.V. antenna generates 14 kilovolts
into 75 ohms from the the EMP generated by 10 megatons blast at 10
kilometers. Source: Nuclear Weapons & Technologies.
I don't know of any medical studies done on EMP effects
on humans - are there similarities to lightning effects?
----------------------------------
Just SAY no to insane technologies
----------------------------------
Richard Steven Walz
then it is definitely powerful enough to roast your eyeballs too! Might as
well make a "death ray"!;) In the case of a 10 Megaton blast, are you aware
that 10 kilometers is inside the fireball??? (People are SO looney!) All
this means is that anything salvaged from the wreckage that looks halfway
intact after say, a decay time of 4 to 6 halflives, collected in radiation
suits and washed throroughly, will likely not work anymore anyway,
especially if it's semiconductor, but that this is more proabaly caused by
the nuclear particles than EMP, as neutrons screw the hell out of fine
structured substrate, as well as polluting the dopant in Si and Ge
material! Sufficient EMP to harm electronics straightaway leaves burns on
and in human tissue!!! Never mind the electronics!
-Steve Walz rst...@armory.com
Wray Kephart
X In article <33jrgi$8...@pandora.sf.ca.us>,
X Frank Hausman <fhau...@pandora.sf.ca.us> wrote:
---snip---
X The only problem with EMP is that if it is powerful enough to stop gadgets,
10 volts across the gate of a 5 volt Vbe breakdown transistor is more
than adaquate. If a short low current pulse then the power is insignificant
X then it is definitely powerful enough to roast your eyeballs too! Might as
X well make a "death ray"!;)
see above re power.
X In the case of a 10 Megaton blast, are you aware
X that 10 kilometers is inside the fireball??? (People are SO looney!) All
I dont think so !
X this means is that anything salvaged from the wreckage
X that looks halfway
X intact after say, a decay time of 4 to 6 halflives, collected in radiation
X suits and washed throroughly, will likely not work anymore anyway,
X especially if it's semiconductor, but that this is more proabaly caused by
X the nuclear particles than EMP, as neutrons screw the hell out of fine
X structured substrate, as well as polluting the dopant in Si and Ge
X material!
Having exposed electronics to nuclear blasts, FXR's, LINAC's, and Cyclotrons,
I believe that I can state (with some degree of confidence) that you're
incorrect.
X Sufficient EMP to harm electronics straightaway
X leaves burns on and in human tissue!!!
A piezoelectric stack driving a magnetron coupled to a parabolic antenna
has been demonstrated to disable transistor radio equipment at 100 meters
with no obvious harm to colateral biologics. No long term studies done.
X Never mind the electronics!
X -Steve Walz rst...@armory.com
Richard Steven Walz
Wray Kephart <kep...@crash.cts.com> wrote:
>Richard Steven Walz (rst...@armory.com) wrote:
>X In article <33jrgi$8...@pandora.sf.ca.us>,
>X Frank Hausman <fhau...@pandora.sf.ca.us> wrote:
>---snip---
>X The only problem with EMP is that if it is powerful enough to stop gadgets,
>
>10 volts across the gate of a 5 volt Vbe breakdown transistor is more
>than adaquate. If a short low current pulse then the power is insignificant
>
>X then it is definitely powerful enough to roast your eyeballs too! Might as
>X well make a "death ray"!;)
>
>see above re power.
Sure, you can get within a close radius to a device and by carefully
focussing RF power, you can break a circuit at its weakest link, but that's
trivial. You have to either use a hell of a substantial piece of equipment
or else get really close. That's not what the discussion was about! The kid
had visions of 'magic ray guns'. You also dodge the issue of acting on a
circuit you don't know particulars about! You'd have to sit and pump wide
band pulses at it and hope you hit the right harmonic to set up high enough
induced voltages. You can also break wine glasses with a big speaker and an
oscillator too, but not if I have it in my hand full of wine! As for
inducing voltages in circuits with other ground paths, such as the MOSFET
you discuss above, you'd have to be awfully lucky that the head designer
was sick the day it was approved to find a circuit that fragile!
-Steve
>X In the case of a 10 Megaton blast, are you aware
>X that 10 kilometers is inside the fireball??? (People are SO looney!) All
>
>I dont think so !
--------------------------------------
Quote your sources, please!!! I have a good book on this subject!
-Steve
>X this means is that anything salvaged from the wreckage
>X that looks halfway
>X intact after say, a decay time of 4 to 6 halflives, collected in radiation
>X suits and washed throroughly, will likely not work anymore anyway,
>X especially if it's semiconductor, but that this is more proabaly caused by
>X the nuclear particles than EMP, as neutrons screw the hell out of fine
>X structured substrate, as well as polluting the dopant in Si and Ge
>X material!
>
>Having exposed electronics to nuclear blasts, FXR's, LINAC's, and Cyclotrons,
>I believe that I can state (with some degree of confidence) that you're
>incorrect.
-------------------------------------------
Braggart! Cite your papers!
State your credentials! I'm getting tired of you when you haven't bothered
to even state why we should believe in you! Let me guess, you were a chief
in the Navy and think you know everything, eh? Uh-huh, another navy school
wonder!
Come on and give us a break! I've had upper division solid state wafer
physics. You can't dump particles galore through silicon and have it stay
intact unless you built its cladding for mil-spec and space rated!! It
might work a little, but its more likely to crash and stay down! This stuff
was in the problem sets! You're pissing on yourself!
-Steve
>X Sufficient EMP to harm electronics straightaway
>X leaves burns on and in human tissue!!!
>
>A piezoelectric stack driving a magnetron coupled to a parabolic antenna
>has been demonstrated to disable transistor radio equipment at 100 meters
>with no obvious harm to colateral biologics. No long term studies done.
------------------------
A fucking BIG piezoelectric stack!!! And big capacitors! A magnetron takes
some juice to bring it up!
And anyway, the standard EMP we were discussing was from nuclear bombs, I
had referred to the popular misconceptions about it. Any prompt
super-critical nuclear device will create much more heat than EMP at every
radius! Thus my assertion of burns is correct. With a broadspectrum pulse
device you can induce burns while causing a radio receiver to eat itself as
well, or you can choose your wavelengths and so tissue is transparent to
that wavelength. You're just picking nits. You'd still have to know a lot
about the device you wanted to disable. And I dispute that you could
guarantee that you wouldn't cause burns or a reaction in a human target!
I've seen idiots who stood in front of uW dishes as well, and they weren't
too well off the next day!! Surprise!
Yes, of course specialized equipment can be set up to either interefere on
a moment by moment basis or to cause the components to break down, if the
EM radiation is directed by parabolic reflection. I have no doubt this
could be done with a very short pulse to receiving equipment. But I would
like to see anyone stop the ignition system of a truck with anything they
could haul around!!! And I have a book showing blast radii for numerous
megatonage nuclear devices, and that was well with the fireball for a 10
Megaton device!!! 10 kilometers, let me remind you, was the fire radius for
both structure fire and skin dissolution at Hiroshima after only a 15 to 20
*kiloton* blast!!! 10 kilometers is only 6 miles! And I can pick and choose
my particles and methods to allow silicon devices to withstand cyclotrons
as well, but you know as well as I that much VLSI will NOT survive this!
You're pointing at carefully selected instances rather than effective
practice!!! Also, I'd LOVE to see you stand in front of your parabolic dish
when you set it off!!;->
-Steve Walz rst...@armory.com
James C. Bach
In article <JVP.94Au...@isotope.juliet.ll.mit.edu>, j...@isotope.juliet.ll.mit.edu ( Jim Pieronek) writes:
>
> I worked on engine controls for Generous Motors in the mid '80s.
> While I was there we got this strange complaint about several cars
> (Oldsmobiles with a particular engine) stalling out at the same spot
> on a road in Miami. They sent a couple of engineers down there and
> they got hold of these cars and found that the engine computers were
> going bonkers at this one spot. They called in the FCC and they found
> some ding-dong running a pirate radio station out of a hotel a few
> hundred feet from the stalling spot. They yanked the plug on that guy
> and the problem went away.
>
> So yeah, it's possible, but it would be difficult to nail every car.
> The radio station in this case only dissabled engines with a
> particular engine computer and wiring harness.
>
> Of course you could EMP them, but that has other drawbacks.
Of course, that was THEN and this is NOW, and our control modules are
MUCH more tolerant of EMC, so the odds of "stalling" a GM car remotely is
highly unlikely; I know that I would hate to be at the transmitting end
of a device that could impose >200V/m field strength at an appreciable
distance!
John Graley
fhau...@pandora.sf.ca.us (Frank Hausman) writes:
> [...]
>high-energy-release chemical battery driving a explosively collapsed
>electromagnetic rail gun.
A what?
You have _got_ to tell me what this is, and how it works.
I want one.
~THE GREAT NAME
--
Beware the GREAT NAME, for he is the devil's horn.
He flames for lust, or greed, or a laugh.
Ye, he will criticise his own brethrin, to gain his SysOp's Password.
Fear him, for he is the harbinger of flames.
Frank Schauerte E340
or imaging from the integrated circuit point of view. I would like to take
a week long short course, as would be given in industry. I know of one at
UCLA, and I assume MIT also has some. Any others?
Any information appreciated--posted or sent to me. Thanks
---
_________________________________________________________
Frank Schauerte--E & Electronics Research Department
General Motors R&D Center Warren, MI, USA
email=>scha...@gmr.com
Warren Gay
:In article <33jrgi$8...@pandora.sf.ca.us>,
:Frank Hausman <fhau...@pandora.sf.ca.us> wrote:
:>Two methods were mentioned: a remote-controllable kill switch on the
:>car, and a remote controllable EMP generator in the road. EMP
:>Note from a friend: A typical YAGI T.V. antenna generates 14 kilovolts
:>into 75 ohms from the the EMP generated by 10 megatons blast at 10
:>kilometers. Source: Nuclear Weapons & Technologies.
:The only problem with EMP is that if it is powerful enough to stop gadgets,
:then it is definitely powerful enough to roast your eyeballs too! Might as
:well make a "death ray"!;) In the case of a 10 Megaton blast, are you aware
:-Steve Walz rst...@armory.com
Naw. A lot of hams have noticed that transmitting on 2 meters at say
50 Watts is enough to stall some newer cars. Its not effective on everything,
but its reported to work well on some 8-)
Other hams have found that it works even better on their own vehicles!
[Note: I brought rec.radio.amateur.misc into this foray]
--------------------
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG John Coutts Library Services Limited
w...@coutts.UUCP Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
(or wwg%cou...@uunet.ca, wwg%cou...@uunet.uu.net)
Richard Steven Walz
>In article <Cv6so...@armory.com> rst...@armory.com
>(Richard Steven Walz) writes:
>:Frank Hausman <fhau...@pandora.sf.ca.us> wrote:
>:>Two methods were mentioned: a remote-controllable kill switch on the
>:>car, and a remote controllable EMP generator in the road. EMP
>:>Note from a friend: A typical YAGI T.V. antenna generates 14 kilovolts
>:>into 75 ohms from the the EMP generated by 10 megatons blast at 10
>:>kilometers. Source: Nuclear Weapons & Technologies.
Know anybody who stands in front of them? My dad was an antenna engineer
for Harris Broadcast products in Quincy, Illinois for 35 years!
And 14kV is about the static charge you can get from moving air from ground
to about ten feet on a windy day! Looked at any books on ESD lately!!!
If your TV antenna was a problem at a distance of any reasnonable sort,
you'd have many more problems with equipment in this world. It's not the
voltage but the charge delivery and output impedance that is important.
You said "into 75 ohms". 75 ohms of what? My TV antenna? Your butt?
-Steve Walz
>:The only problem with EMP is that if it is powerful enough to stop gadgets,
>:then it is definitely powerful enough to roast your eyeballs too! Might as
>:well make a "death ray"!;) In the case of a 10 Megaton blast, are you aware
>[...]
>:-Steve Walz rst...@armory.com
>
>Naw. A lot of hams have noticed that transmitting on 2 meters at say
>50 Watts is enough to stall some newer cars. Its not effective on everything,
>but its reported to work well on some 8-)
>Other hams have found that it works even better on their own vehicles!
>[Note: I brought rec.radio.amateur.misc into this foray]
>--------------------
>Warren W. Gay VE3WWG John Coutts Library Services Limited
>w...@coutts.UUCP Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
>(or wwg%cou...@uunet.ca, wwg%cou...@uunet.uu.net)
----------------------------------------
And now you're talking about those cheap shit computers in many modern
vehicles. Let's see it stop a tractor or a '64 Chevy truck! Those stupid
computers stop themSELVES half the time!!! And your anecdote is much more
likely due to confusing anti-theft devices and killing the spark. Let's
face it, there is enough gamma and heat and even light at 10 km to fuck
with a human in the open just fine!!! It was reported once on a local news
program that if our bayside area, Santa Cruz, California, were hit by 10
MTons airburst, that it would burn everything even in a heavy rain for 7
miles in every direction from the flash and fireball! I think that EMP is
both the least of our worries at that point, as well as overrrated as a
threat to equipment at greater distance. The paint would be boiling on cars
anyway, and the interior's igniting! 10 km is about 6 miles! Farther out,
EMP would be strongly affected by whether the circuit was complete so that
induction would work, namely turned on at the time, and whether it was a
receiving device rather than a shielded device, and the EMP can easily be
"hardened" for with minimal effort, mostly as simple as aluminum foil! It
is strongly overrated except as a short-range threat to what will be too
hot to use or get at for a while anyway! Over the horizon is over the
horizon, and that is not going to reflect enough broad band EMP to make
much difference at 15km or 25km! By the way, a B-52 pilot I know said they
used plain aluminum foil to wrap walkie-talkies in for bail-out! And he was
flying nukes to the fail-safe all during the late 70's and early 80's!!
The only people who are going to be worried about their computers and cars
stalling are those who will die next week or later today from radiation.
I was around for "duck and cover" and I have all the Civil Defense books on
this stuff. EMP is mostly a gag. And what you can do with high powered
antennas is well known to people in the trade. My Dad said Harris lost
several people in the fifties testing antennae hot! And it wasn't from
touching them either, it was microwave translator links! He used to work
the newly designed antenna because he wasn't afraid of heights. Something
about one too many jumps as a paratrooper with a lot more to lose. The
Battle of the Bulge and the 101st Airborne, you know. He spent some
overnighters out on the Harris antenna testing range out amid cows in
the Illinois prairie. He's deceased now, no, not from that! I'm 44 years
old, and I have already read all the data on this stuff. It doesn't change
much! It's a favorite pasttime of kids, and it seldom works like they say
it does. More urban nuclear legends. Oh my.
-Steve Walz rst...@armory.com