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"Another reason why privacy could be just a passing fad, terrorism is going to get too good. [1997]"
- Larry Niven
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| Zoo Fences | ||
| Caustic water moat |
This is a great extension on a clever idea. Moats are used in zoos to keep animals who fear the water separate from visitors without an intrusive fence. If the liquid was caustic, you could probably use it even with animals who ordinarily felt no fear of water.
In the park outside the headquarters of Jorj McKie (one of the main characters), caustic water was used to fence in some of the plant life showcased in the park.
| There were bold stretches of lawn and hidden scraps of lawn, and some stretches of greenery which were not lawn at all but mobile sheets of predatory leaf imprisoned behind thin moats of caustic water. |
| Technovelgy from The Dosadi Experiment,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Berkley Putnam in 1977 Additional resources -
|
The city of Chu (the only habitable city on the surface of Dosadi) was also surrounded by rivers, which doubled as moats to keep out the feral population outside. The Dosadis themselves used "caustic" language to keep themselves isolated socially, since any sort of sincere tie with another person was only a tool that could be used against you by the unscrupulous.
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
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'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
