Van Mounted Body Scanners Coming To A Street Near You

Summary

August 25 2010: A company based out of Massachusetts, United States of America, reports that it has sold over 500 vehicle mounted Full Body Scanner-style units. The majority of the sales are to the U.S. Army, but some sales are to police department and similar organizations.

These devices can detect hidden bombs, weapons, and people in vehicles they pass near by, and can thus probably penetrate walls to some extent. In other words, all the controversy of Full Body Scanners have now gone mobile.

Source

Bibliography

1. original article at RawStory

Game and Story Use

• I've known plenty of PCs who would love to have one of these devices to spy on the enemy. Being able to sneak peak inside a car or building could give valuable intelligence, on numbers of personnel and their armament and disposition, contraband or booby traps hidden away, etc.
  • If the PCs are military intelligence, special forces, or the like, they may be able to requisition such a machine for a mission.
• The same can be turned on the PCs by various NPC factions. Big Brother is watching.
  • The PCs have noted the surveillance van and assume their conversations are being listened to. What they might not realize is that the full scans also reveal anything they communicate with sign language, pointing, or body language. The scanners might even reveal hidden objects and secret doors.
  • A regime that wrongfully creates a lot of fugitives (such as resurgent Fascism) no longer has to ask whether you have anyone in your attic or under your bed.
• For more ideas, see the Full Body Scanner page. Take any of the ideas there, and put them on wheels.
• Any other large technology can be likewise mounted on a vehicle, anything that's generally location-based could be mounted on wheels or even hidden in a mundane looking van. You could put a forcefield on wheels, plant a portal to the past in a porche, or travel the land in a cthulhu bookmobile with fourth-dimensional altar.
  • And the Genius Loci of such a vehicle might eventually possess it like in Christine.
    • One of the Full Body Scanner vans ends up so possessed. It's a very snoopy spirit, that goes around scanning people and cars constantly. Perhaps it becomes a stalker.
• If these things end up in civilian hands (or those of inadequately monitored state agents), they're likely to be a pervert's delight and a horror for anyone else.
  • Someone finds nude or sexual scans of them, either sent to them as blackmail or posted online as nonconsensual pornography.
  • Someone parking on a residential street (especially at night) or clearly following someone becomes cause for even more paranoia than usual.
  • Someone the PCs need gets caught with one (whether or not they were using it for illicit purposes), and needs to be saved from the resulting lynch mob.
  • Rumors that someone has scaled the tech down to pocket size set off a moral panic.
  • The police are rumored to have a catalog of scans for "private use." Whether or not these rumors are true, they are likely to make their work much more exciting.