Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

What is the social/ethical/legal status of AnthroPCs?

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bhtooefr:
However, Momo's electric discharge attack has been in BOTH her original and her new chassis.

I'm almost wondering if it's a technique that exploits the hardware that all AnthroPCs have, rather than specialized hardware. Doubtful, though, especially given the voltages and currents at play here.

In 1474, Momo was about half a meter away from the computer. Dielectric breakdown voltage of dry air is 33 kV per cm, so over 50 cm, we're talking about 1.65 MV. And, we know that Momo's discharge can be lethal when turned up, which means it's at least 50 mA (the general rules are, needs to be about 50 V to cross through a human's body, needs to be about 50 mA to stop the heart - less voltage, more current, resistance is too high for the current to make it across the skin to get to the heart; more voltage, less current, it hurts like a SOB but isn't enough to affect the heart).

If she can keep the voltage at that level when the current is at 50 mA, we're talking about 82.5 kW of energy. That is a CRAPTON of energy - in the real world, Momo's original chassis could probably hold about 50 Wh of batteries if very densely packed. Ignoring internal resistance or safety considerations, a 82.5 kW load would drain a 50 Wh battery in 2.16 seconds. (In reality, trying to draw 82.5 kW from a 65C 50 Wh LiPoly battery (so we're talking state-of-the-art, dangerous chemistry batteries here) wouldn't work, and the battery would probably burst into flame.)

Actually, now I want to see here... about 3.25 kW is the most you can get from such a battery. Now let's run those numbers. W = V * I, we know 3.25 kW, we're aiming for 50 mA, that means we get 65 kV. So, Momo needs to be within 1.97 cm of her target, to work within the ratings of her battery (assuming a 65C LiPo, which like I said is a quite unstable chemistry (read: bursts into flame easily), and deliver a lethal shock. Now, at 3.25 kW, she can sustain that for 55 seconds - EASILY enough to stop a person's heart for good.

Edit: Oh, and assuming the same 3.25 kW, she would have been putting about 2 mA into the computer. Enough to do damage for sure, with how sensitive circuits like that are at that high voltage. Not sure if it'd actually smoke the computer like that.

Carl-E:
Consider the smoke to be artistic license, then. 

Is it cold in here?:
She's documented in-comic as being able to produce 250 mA. There's a cite for that on the wiki.

She might have fried the computer by induction, or may be able to produce stepped leaders. Even lightning doesn't have enough voltage to do thousands of feet of dielectric breakdown.

If I were designing her self-defense system I'd have a capacitor bank for it. There are lots of ways to get extreme peak power without huge amounts of energy.

But this isn't the engineering thread.

One little piece of Word of God that I don't think got captured anywhere was that job discrimination is not routine. Jeph said Momo's difficulty in getting hired was just because the local job situation was grim, and while there were doubtless some discriminatory people the job market in general was equal opportunity.

Pilchard123:
Something Garand said got me to thinking: what would happen in an AnthroPC joined the military? Since they (presumably) cannot feel pain and (presumably) would function even if parts were missing, would they ever be used as decoys/meatshields/mine-clearers? If the 'brain' can be backed up, would they be considered expendable? I'd like to think this would not happen, since the existence if human AIs (seriously, I sometimes forget that Momo is not human in the biological sense) would sort of imply the existence of equally advanced non-intelligent machines. Just some thoughts.

Is it cold in here?:
Especially since an M-31 chassis is apparently only a few thousand dollars secondhand. Doubtless more when acquired new and military-capable, of course.

Is there anything in the UCMJ that would prevent ordering them to walk through minefields?

Would their vulnerability to EMP guns make them useless in combat?

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