The Thirteen Methods

 

There are thirteen ways to kill a bot.

1) Most obviously is the use of overwhelming force. Anti-tank mines. Carpet bombing the block. Fission warhead. That'll kill 'em. And I suppose bombing your own position may not seem obvious to most people, but sometimes you gotta make sacrifices to win. Like yourself. Gotta sacrifice yourself. That's uh... that's winning.

2) Perhaps more obvious than the first if you still have a survival instinct after meeting the bot, is a big gun. Now bots are distributed little suckers, so it'll need to be a really big gun to take them out in one shot. I'm talking tank sized. Projectile needs to be at least 30 cm in diameter, and then you shoot for their center of mass. Enough force behind the shot and that'll sever control linkages, linear actuators, fibrous interchanges, basically cut every limb off from all the others. TKO.

3) If you've got a more average sized gun, use a lot of bullets. The armor on these things isn't exactly bulletproof, unless you're using bird shot or something dumb like that. Shoot for joints and sensors, that'll slow them down. Then fill the torso cavity up with lead. Lead is non-conductive, and it'll block command pathways just as effectively as a scissors.

4) Electro-magnets. Big ones, or at least something that'll produce a big field. Some of the more sophisticated bots use optics for primary command paths, but the servos and actuators are almost always tied in with... what? Oh, okay fine, back on number three, pure lead is actually conductive. But bullets aren't pure lead are they? And they don't conduct electricity real well do they? I rest my case. Anyways, servos and actuators. Almost always tied to control hardware via copper or gold, so a good magnetic field or pulse will just about always screw with their movement if it doesn't down 'em completely.

5) And we're getting a little more strategic here with heat. These newer bots are getting more and more into their fiber optics for command pathways, let's them think faster, process distributed neurons just as fast as organic brains. So they carry more and more optically transparent polyfibers for crucial cognitive functions. But as much as they try to shield those lines, they're still essentially just fancy plastic. Get the bot up to about 150 Celsius and those lines will start to denature, causing brain-death. Wull, yeah, that'd kill you too. But don't, like, be in the fire you lite the bot with. I'm talking heat as a weapon, not an environmental pressure.

6) For all the awesome points, lasers. These are double purpose. Hit their visual acuity sensors with 'em first to blind it, slow it down, then move to the chassis for the kill. If you target the vertebrel lines, or any of the control nodes, you'll break apart the optical command pathways and they'll... well it breaks down because any laser worth it's salt lands at about 400C on metal. What? No, heat is heat, it's like, more general. I'm talking about la... Listen, who's making the list here?

7) Pressure. Like extreme pressure, a couple hundred atmospheres worth. Bots'll take a vacuum just fine but put 'em in a pressure vessel or under enough weight and they'll... Okay, again, I'm not advocating that you join them in the pressure vessel. Lay a trap or something. Drop something really heavy on... I mean, sure, deep oceans will also work but that's not the reason... I'll get to... Fine!

8) For some impatient hack, water. Look, waterproofing something like a tablet processor is easy enough, but waterproofing something with the range of motion of a bot is really hard. Even the Spensor fields they have on their joints to keep out dust will fail with just a few PSI of water, and even with all the non-conductive optics the control exchange boards are still powered by good ol' electricity. If you can get their torso submerged in water, it's over.

9) And now we're getting into the real desperate territories. Psionic wave pulse. See, the controllers are all still running trinary quantum machines, and like any quantum field state devices they're subject to psi waves. But obviously, or I guess not so obvious if you don't really know anything about psionics, psi waves are really short... c'mon, I already moved on, can you jus... Look, it takes a lot of water and more than a second of exposure. Water balloons won't cut it.

10) We've got... wait, I didn't finish what I was saying about psionics. So psi waves are short range. A quick blast from a trained emitter will lock all the quantum bits and effectively kill the bot, but even assuming you are a trained psi emitter, you'd have to be basically touching the bot. See, with these later items we're getting far more risky and dangerous. Which brings us to number ten, blades and knives. Like psi waves you've got to be close enough to get a blow in on one of the controllers, but unlike psi waves you have to get through the armor and you're not guaranteed a hit. Well trained... wh... look, I never said you should actually drop a bomb on yourself, that was you. Yes that would be more dangerous, but that wasn't the point of number one!

11) Direct hack. Trinary systems are extremely secure, but quantum hacking does exist after a fashion. Like a psi blast you have to... no, would you just shut up about the bomb? I'm trying to talk about hacking! Where you force the quantum bit into alignment by observation. Yes, it takes sophisticated nano-ware, but presuming you can get it into the bot's torso I... So don't drop it. I did say these higher ones were more dangerous, ri...? Would you stop interrupting me!

12) Look, I don't really care how many doctorates you have, I'm the one with actual hands-on experience killing bots. When did you... look, no I haven't! First off where the hell am I supposed to come by a fission warhead? Or large ordinance?... Because I know it will kill them! Just like the psi waves or trinary hacks!... Well because I don't want to handle a jar of nano-ware if I can avoid it you poot-cha! And you're no psionic emitter yourself you great lumbering... c'mere, I want to introduce you to my friend the door.

13) I'm sorry, we sorta lost the plot there. Number twelve is... wait, did I...? Well, whatever. Twelve and thirteen are probably too hard and too dangerous for you to ever want to try anyway. Happy hunting.