A recent hypothesis was recently posed to me by a friend about how supernatural suspense/horror would be different with the use of modern technology -- cell phones, the internet, and other forms of instantaneous communication.
Here are a few quick and dirty ways to sort out the use of smartphones:
1) Dead Zones - Let's face it. Most supernatural "incidents" in horror haven't occurred in an urban setting. Compared to downtown New York, how many abandoned cabins in the woods or old farmhouses have you seen? The bulk of America is rural, and the bulk of these rural areas have limited to no signal. Using the opensignal web site to identify dead zones, I've found places that no major US carrier has service within an hour drive of Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, San Jose, San Francisco, and Seattle. Even better -- using these maps, there are frequent locations within these municipalities themselves that have dead zones. I'd imagine that any supernatural entity with any basic knowledge of communications infrastructure would settle themselves as far as they could get from actual coverage out of a basic self-preservation instinct.
2) Inopportune Timing - When you're walking through a dangerous situation, a cell phone can be the absolute worst thing for you. A hand on a phone's not a hand on a gun. Similarly, a ringing/vibrating cell phone can distract you at the wrong moment, or attract attention to your attempt at being stealthy. Throw in how frequently you get Facebook updates, text messages, or notifications from apps, and having your phone on anything but silent for a mission can be a constant bother.
3) Turn the tech on them - Through viruses, electronic warfare, spying, or even things monitoring wifi/cell towers, the cell phone can betray their presence electronically -- or even become a tool to misdirect, distract, or otherwise harm the players. Alternatively, it could be easily used as a tracking tool -- every phone has built in monitoring that can triangulate position using towers or GPS, called the E911 protocol. Even when it's off, it broadcasts -- provided the battery's not removed. The more they rely on the phone, the more effective these tricks become.
4) The battery - Cell phone batteries expire at a rapid rate when used heavily. Even the best phones only have 1-2 hours of heavy use in them, and most use more juice than a charger will provide. Best part? A non-secure charger can be used to compromise a phone, in the manner of #3. Keep track of their uses. Give them a limited number, with some random variance related to how often their character might charge their phone.
5) OpSec - An operation can easily be compromised by the use of social networking, text messages, or personal calls. Either the players can experience operations that're blown simply by someone posting something to their grandmother over MySpace, or, if they're working for an agency or organization, protocol may be so stringent as to not allow phones.
How would you limit the impact cell phones have on the horror genre?
No comments:
Post a Comment