Atmospheric Discharge Generator

By Professor Harvey Wangenstein, Electrodyne Engineer
September 14, 1878
 

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a rather unique "demonstration of faith" outside the town of St. Joseph, Missouri. It was at a Revival meeting led by the Reverend Jedidiah Brown that I witnessed a young man ostensibly calling upon the power of the Lord to bring down lightning before about a hundred assembled faithful. After listening to an hour-long, fire and brimstone sermon about the Might, Wisdom and Mercy of God, the crowd was led out of the Reverend's sizable tent and into an adjoining dirt field. There, I was occasioned to see the young man (no more than twelve years of age), dressed in simple farm clothing and staring up at the cloudless Missouri sky. As we watched, he raised one arm into the air, his palm outstretched toward the sky. His other hand pointed at a scarecrow that looked as though it had been placed just for this meeting. Its carved-pumpkin head grinned malevolently at us from atop its straw-stuffed body. Everyone stood in silence, waiting. One man -who had obviously already seen whatever it was that we were about to witness- nudged his neighbor and whispered, "Here it comes." After several seconds, the boy closed his eyes, took a deep breath and called out for the Lord to "smite His enemies, that they may know His power". Then, from out of that cloudless Missouri sky dropped one of the largest electrical discharges I have ever seen outside of my laboratory. I got just a momentary glimpse of the bolt reaching the scarecrow, then was forced to turn away by the intensity of the light. I was not alone. The blinding flash of lightning and deafening crack of thunder stunned everyone in the crowd. Several ladies fainted at the massive display and had to be tended to by Doc Wilson, the local physician who attended the event in case of just such an emergency.

Peering through a thick cloud of smoke and ozone, I could see what remained of the scarecrow. From all appearances, its head had exploded from the lightning's heat, showering the crowd with bits of pumpkin and giving the entire area an aroma similar to that of burnt pumpkin pie. Its body (or what was left of it, for its straw stuffing was burning rapidly) seemed to cling desperately to the wooden frame it had been lashed to, and the ground around it was scorched black. Through ringing ears, I could hear Reverend Brown extolling the boy's piety and virtue in being able to call upon the power of the Lord. This concluded the service, and the collection plate was then passed around, with all in attendance giving generously. Even I was inclined to donate, for the display had provided me with a wealth of Scientific Curiosity and Inspiration. I attempted to speak to the boy as he retreated to a second, smaller tent off to the side, but Reverend Brown intervened, sternly insisting that such miracles were very draining for the lad and that he needed to rest. Disappointed, I consoled myself with a close examination of the smoldering remnants of the scarecrow, now almost completely burnt to cinders. I gathered samples of the ashen straw, the blackened soil and even several bits of cooked pumpkin before returning to my wagon. There, I cleaned myself up more properly and headed back to town and the comfort of my hotel room. The next morning, I returned to the site of the previous day's demonstration in hopes of questioning the boy about his fascinating ability. When I reached the field, all signs of the tents, the scarecrow and the bolt of lightning were gone. I could find no physical evidence that they had ever been there at all. Fortunately, my samples were intact. On the ride back to St. Joseph, I stopped and asked several of the local farmers about Reverend Brown. While they all remembered attending his service the day before, none of them could say for certain from where he had come or what town he was visiting next. Feeling stymied at this, I instead turned my concentration upon the puzzle with which the boy had provided me. I remember thinking the rest of the way back about how I could do what that young man had apparently done: how I could bring a bolt of lightning out of a cloudless sky?

Once I returned from my journeys and was safely ensconced in my laboratory, I began contemplating how to generate lightning strikes at a time and place of my choosing. I started by consulting the collected research of the Union's Library of the Natural Sciences, Meteorological Division. (As a side note, I would like to recommend that every Engineer give serious thought to collecting as much data as possible on his or her own before turning to the resources of the Union. While the amount of information represented in its various Libraries is remarkable, the bureaucracy set up to administer them is nothing short of maddening! I spent weeks filling out and filing the necessary forms, requisitions and credentials with what were constantly referred to as 'the proper authorities'. Never one to advocate anarchy, I nonetheless feel that this sort of impediment upon Scientific research will serve only to aid those who wish to prevent Science from aiding Mankind to its fullest capacity. But I digress.) To put my findings simply: I concluded that lightning occurs when there is a large enough difference in charge between the electrical fields of the sky and the ground. (By 'sky', of course, I mean the volume of atmospheric localization containing the electric charge, usually a storm cloud of some sort.) This difference in charge is calculated by measuring the difference in voltage between the sky and the ground, and dividing it by the difference in height between the two. The practical upshot of this being that increasing the voltage of the sky or the height of the ground, or decreasing the voltage of the ground or the height of the sky makes an electrical discharge that much more likely. A simple example of this is the way that tall buildings attract more lightning strikes than short ones, due to their increased height and their electrical connection to the ground. Therefore, it seemed to me that I had two directions in which to pursue my goal: raise the target's effective height, or lower its voltage. I decided upon the latter, due to the practical difficulties in altering a target's effective height while still maintaining its electrical connection to the ground.

Recent advances in metallurgy have revealed that Aluminum makes for an exceptional positive ion. It can easily lose a great deal of electrical charge through chemical reaction, consequently making itself very attractive (quite literally) to free electricity in its environment. While aluminum is currently very difficult and expensive to extract (via the sodium reduction of molten aluminum chloride), it remains nonetheless the best choice for our purposes here. Additionally, I have developed certain processes that raise the purity of the aluminum sample to levels unknown outside of a laboratory setting. I refer to this material as "Pure aluminum" in order to distinguish it from ordinary samples. By spraying the target ground with Pure ionic aluminum, we can cause the excess electricity contained in the ground to be drawn into the electricity-deficient ions, thereby canceling their charge. This lowers the voltage of the ground and raises the overall difference in charge between the ground and the sky, increasing the likelihood of an electrical discharge to the target ground. Recent studies in ferric materials have shown that ions can be moved about quite easily in open air with the application of a magnetic field. By propelling an invisible stream of aluminum ions to the target in such a manner, the voltage of the ground in the area drops very quickly, causing a lightning strike to occur almost instantaneously. This discharge can take place in almost any meteorological situation, including a cloudless sky, though the resultant bolt will take a greater amount of aluminum to coax out of the sky and will be far smaller than one drawn from a raging storm.

While the military applications of this invention are obvious, I must point out that the cost of ordinary aluminum alone makes this device impractical for widespread use, much less the additional expense of bringing it to Purity. Also, it is my hope that when Pure aluminum becomes more readily available, the Atmospheric Discharge Generator will be used to prevent the random lightning strikes that cause death and destruction every year, particularly out West, where cowboys risk death on the open trail by carrying metal tools or weapons. Even in cities, the Generator could be used in a designated area to prevent damage or injury to buildings and inhabitants.

Wherever that boy is today, I would like to thank him for his gift to me of the Inspiration for the Atmospheric Discharge Generator. I only hope that this invention will be as helpful to the whole of Mankind.
 

GAME NOTES

(Second Edition.) Forces 2 (Forces 3/Prime 2)

The practical upshot of this device is that you pull the trigger, and a bolt of lightning from out of the sky (and not the gun) strikes your target. A friend of mine pointed out that the Atmospheric Discharge Generator is a Scientific version of the D&D "Call Lightning" spell. I think she's right, but why should magic-users have all the fun? This Effect is simply an example of the idea that, with enough thought, most Effects can be converted from one Paradigm to another.

This Effect can be created using either the existing electrical charge in the local atmosphere (Forces 2) or the Scientist can create the electricity himself (Forces 3/Prime 2). If existing electricity is used, the Storyteller should take the weather conditions into account when determining Difficulty and Damage (i.e., greater difficulty/less damage in clear skies, lower difficulty/more damage during storms). The use of created electricity creates an unseen "leader" from the target into the sky, which then connects to the current there to complete the bolt.

2002 Derek D. Bass
 

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