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What can I do to defend myself against killer robots?

Seriously, is there something simple that I can put in my glovebox of my car to use in case these robots start getting scary? Is there a simple household good that will work well against these, until they start explicitly shielding against stuff?

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I'm going to assume that most 'killer robots' will be reasonably heavily armoured, so unless you have very powerful AP rounds the best approach will be to disable rather than destroy. They'll also likely be hardened against 'jammers' or any radio interference.

Presumably most systems will use multiple sensors and vision systems, LiDAR, RADAR, etc. The key would be to disable enough of each to put the machine in 'safe mode'.

Vision systems are the easiest to attack. A cheap paintball gun, spray can, or fire extinguisher would be more than capable of disabling a camera system.

LiDAR would likely also be fairly easy to disable. Most LiDAR systems also depend on visual light, and have a revolving sensor of some sort (though there are some fixed units as well) which have their own weaknesses. A reasonably powerful pellet gun, or most rifles or pistols would be enough to disable a revolving lidar sensor, and a few shots with paint would disable a fixed unit, much like a camera.

It's almost certain the designer of such robots will think of these attacks and build around them. Think windshield wipers or compressed air to clear debris. So, the ideal material would be very thick, very sticky, and completely opaque. It would also need a high pressure container and a nozzle that produces a laminar stream to hit the sensors from at least 10m away.

Spray can of sticky expanding foam for the various sensors?

Edit: Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es2rVHLKS3g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVy5Vm43X_A

There's also bulk rodent glue, if you could figure out how to shoot it :) https://www.domyown.com/catchmaster-bulk-glue-can-p-15693.ht...

So my mini fire extinguisher might be the easiest for now.

Has the bonus of plausible deniability. "The robot was smoking and crackling in that area, so I put the fire out".

Why is it that so many people's thoughts go to "killer robots" when they see a humanoid robot, but not when they see, for instance, a quad copter? Or an assembly line robotic arm? Is it literally just Terminator? I guess more likely Terminator was made because it plays on a deeper psychological phemonenon—a fear of entities that look similar to us, but different. (Which presumably evolves from a rational fear of hostile outsiders to one's tribe. The same instinct that causes other maladaptive impulses in modern society, like jingoism and racism.)

For a very aggressive answer, I would go for one of those shotguns with two magazine tubes you can switch between. Anti-drone projectiles in one and rifled slugs in the other.

Less destructively, a good net launcher seems like it'd stand a decent chance at fouling things but they are usually single shot and inaccurate at any kind of range.

Why are these nonsense fantasy world comments so common here?

For me, my interest is in sort of lateral thinking for any problem. For novel situations, I like to think of what the positive and negative impacts are and particularly what “hacks” might be able to get unexpected outcomes.

I’m typically like this for everything, but for robots that can jump around and stuff (and will likely soon do police and military actions) this is novel enough for me to explore this for the first time.

I think similarly about facial recognition software for how to evade and confuse. And also for biometrics, locks, etc. Any of these things are interesting to me and I want to know how to do stuff with them.

If these become a serious concern to where simply throwing crap on the sensors isn't enough, small scale EMPs aren't that complicated. Using a fast explosive to blast a magnet through a few coils of wire will make a fairly powerful locallized pulse, although it is likely super illegal.

Paint ought to do it. Chuck a bucket of paint at one of these and the sensors will be knocked out instantly.

It’s kind of hard to fling paint, but I guess just making a potato gun that spits out paint should be good.

I’ll be looking for some Holi festival type gear.

Or a paintball gun.

Good idea but when I used them the balls were fairly small and not very accurate. So hitting cameras might be tough to do completely enough to block visit.

Is there a paintball shotgun?

Yes, there are [0]. But it seems like they shoot “slugs” and not a spray of paint in a cone.

[0] https://paintballglobe.com/paintball-shotgun/

Some sort of high tensile wires that their limbs can’t overcome. Flexible materials are computationally hard even for actual humans, let alone for bunch of Python scripts running on a random Docker container somewhere.

Or Reason. Whichever available. Aim for torso.

Pocket EMP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siVGavpBiyA

Obviously would need to modify to generate more energy.

shaped charge type 40mm HE grenades would be fine if you have to defend against a heavily armoured killer robot, but ones like this with exposed hydraulic lines will fall over and curl up after a well placed knife attack, or maybe 12ga flechette rounds from a shotgun if you need a ranged attack.

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