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Stealth Force Beta
YetAnotherName writes "Geeky college pranks are not just the purview of big name science and technology schools. Now that statutes of limitations have expired, Stealth Force Beta, a group of 'constructive vandals' who operated at New Mexico Tech, tell of their exploits. From crawling around steam tunnels, to mounting complex radio surveillance, to getting trapped in elevator shafts, the stories are inspirational, funny, and probably familiar in some way to many /. readers."
This makes my high school pranks of stink bombs and pumping pornography across the school's close-captioned television network on every channel seem weak.
Dude, where's my packet?
Such "exploits" are assinine. News? Hardly, publicity at the most! You fell for this?
"inspirational, funny, and probably familiar" ...not to mention illegal and dangerous to themselves and other people. I understand the concept of pranks, etc., but these kids are putting themselves and others at risk every time they get caught in elevator shafts and the like.
Stealth Force Beta was a secret society...
Now, they're Slashdotted! Nowhere to hide! LOL
Groups of FBI, CIA, WhatHaveYou are coming... Dum dum dum
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
Remember the val kilmer movie Real Genious? Well that's about caltech. filmed there too. Most of the stunts in the side plot including turning dorms in to ice rinks, and mass producing burger king contest entries actually happened. Now those are stunts. Rent it.
And of course there are the classic stunts at caltech taking over the rosebowl. like the time they hacked into the score board and changed the teams to MIT and Caltech. Another time they replaced all of the audience half-time flash card with there own so that when all the cards were flipped instead of showing a stadium sized picture of a washington husky it showed a stadium sized caltech beaver. Both of these staunts were recorded on national TV.
Other stunts there I've read about include restriping a parking lot over night so as to make the spot reserved for a certain professor 'vanish'. Or replastering/painting a building wall overnight to make the doorway for a certain professor's office 'vanish'. Another time this same professor entered an elevator, the doors closed and a few moment later a trapdoor on the ceiling opened and filled the entire elevator with foam packing peanuts, then delivered the packaged professor to his floor. SInce I've met that professor since I know they are true.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
While this group at New Mexico State had some interesting pranks, they have nothing on what MIT and CalTech students have done over the years.
Who can forget the numerous attempts to decorate the Great Dome at MIT? Or someone at CalTech managed to sabotage a spectator placard display so when the placards were displayed at a football game it read CALTECH?
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
The MIT portion of which is well documented here. Great stuff.
Mainly because they used this prank to do something productive. Centennial Plaza had been altered without approval. These students essentially used their vandalism as a form of protest and *successfully returned the plaza to the form in which it had been originally designed*! The Physical Plant was being lazy and f'ed-up the plans. Everyone complained, but no one but Stealth Team Beta did anything about it. This isn't destruction for just fun and burning some professor you don't like. This is destruction for great justice!
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
look at the pictures. These guys probably run a linux user group today
Fleur de Sel
Yep, my alma mater had their share of pranksters too...
"They dropped pumpkins, typewriters and bags of McDonald's hamburgers down a
nine-story stairwell of the Center for Industrial Innovation. Then the Drop
Squad made a mistake. They sent police a videotape of themselves and were
finally caught and punished."
Doh! Hate when that happens!
Feh. One word: Edgewood. Either you know it or you don't.
Who is left having to clean up these messes? Probably an unglorified housekeeper or lawn-worker. They're the real heroes.
Any UNB students past or present out there that have explored the steam tunnels?
These darlings connect all the residences to every building on campus. Since the campus is built on a hill, there are a lot of steps.
Once went as far as the hospital! (that's a long walk above ground let alone going through the tunnels.)
Every so often there are vents that you can peek out of (locked of course) so you can try to figure out where you are.
Hope they didn't cause any money damages.
The statute of limitations on civil suits isn't as black and white as the statute of limitations on criminal charges.
And if they are still trying to cover up who did what, a overly aggresive, and loophole savvy DA could try to go for conspiracy charges, since that crime is on going.
Smile for the camera boys.
There's a book out there entitled "If At All Possible, Involve a Cow." (I'd link to Amazon, but according to them it's out of print; they don't even show a decent picture of the cover.)
Almost everything you mentioned is in there.
I have another parking spot story for you -- this one's a little more practical though.
- I know a fellow who worked at Hamilton Standard in the 60s. One time when the parking lot was being repainted, he and a friend waylaid the person responsible for stenciling on the 'reserved spot' numbers. They didn't make any disappear, though --
- they made sure two of the numbers were duplicated, thus assuring two young engineers their own parking spaces.
I always thought that was pretty cool.Since the person whose spot they'd duplicated never knew any better, never missed anything, the spots were assured until the next time the lot was painted.
(He never did go bowling in that long underground hallway between buildings, though.)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Get it right, bonehead!
I knew everybody in Stealth Force Beta and they were great people and truly helped the campus out with their pranks. I miss their company and reading these on spril.com brings back quite fond memories!
My school made it onto /.! Nifty.
Cool thing is is that most of these nifty things are still talked about at Tech.
As a grad student, I'm suddenly inspired to get some people together and perform some similar "operations" and "hacks" (as they apparently call it at MIT).... Hack #1: saw Bevo's horns off (evil grin)
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
As a current student at NMT I can confim that, yes, PPlant is still just as lazy and incompetent as ever. Sigh...
Why in the world is this a news item on Slashdot.
t .asp)
/. home page. /. is an excellent web site whose biggest limitation is not even its own fault: lack of space! There are too many good stories and not enough space to share them all. Why waste the VALUABLE resource that is /. on this kind of childish garbage?
/.. On the contrary, I am PRAISING the value of /. and trying to argue that a spot on the front page is worth too much to be squandered on junk like this.
Just as an example, let us examine "Operation Up Your Shaft" (http://www.spril.com/StealthForceBeta/UpYourShaf
In this "prank", not only did they climb around in an ACTIVE elevator shaft, they filled the elevator with objects that would deliberately pour out upon an unsuspecting user of the elevator in order to scare them. Climbing around in an elevator shaft that is OPERATIONAL is exceptionally stupid. They are very fortunate nobody was injured or KILLED. Most of the story reads like the beginning of a Darwin Award entry.
First, who cares about a couple of dorks who engaged in a bunch of silly pranks and "Mission Impossible wanna-be" activities.
Second, why condone this sort of DANGEROUS and often illegal behavior. Giving praise and recognition to people who engage in this kind of crap is unwise, misguided, and exceptionally dangerous.
Third, there are FAR more interesting stories in the world of technology and geekdom that could occupy the scant few front page slots on the
I was hesitant to post this because I frequently see (and despise) the ridiculous flamers who seem to only post here so they can be critical of
-Michael
Threshold RPG
For a good read about college pranks, search out If at All Possible, Involve a Cow, by Neil Steinberg.
It's a well researched cronicle of the history of college pranks, and covers the famous MIT and Caltech pranks, but goes beyond the more publicized events to get behind the scenes as much as possible. It also covers the history or college pranks and includes the origins of several college rivalrys, such as midnight raids to capture and recover "prized" school artifacts.
Sadly, it now seems to be out of print, but it's worth finding a used copy or checking your local library.
ISBN 0-312-07810-2
Check out this page:
http://www.ncfelonymurder.org/janet.html
to see how one stupid prank gone awry earned a young woman life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
That's New Mexico TECH... not State.
On page two of the Public Hanging, the text states that "With great persistence and much duct tape, we successfully attached the banners to the building."
Yet more proof that anything is possible with duct tape!
It's a Bagel.
It wasn't so much a prank, but I remember being called out as a member of the local Search and Rescue unit to get some people out of the local mine where someone had managed to get stuck. It was fun to get up there and find students from my classes involved - at about 6 AM yet. I, naturally, refrained from giving them a hard time (well, mostly). I didn't tell the poor terrified person who had actually managed to get stuck that there was a (small, but significant) cave-in just as I reached the mine opening.
This is very much a science/engineering phenomenon - liberal arts students write poems and make films. Science/Engineering students explore mines, build gadgets and construct elaborate pranks involving doing interesting things.
Despite the risks and annoyances I'd like to raise a glass to the engineering pranksters - on the large scale or on the small scale. And in particular I'd like to include those NMT students who kept things interesting.
almost, though...
;^)
Apparently, the caltech administration didn't really appreciate the anti-starwars tone of the movie (since they had lots of starwars funding for phase conjugate mirror technology). Instead they ended up filming most of Real Genious at a nearby school (occidental college) which has similar mediterranean architecture.
The "burger king" entries were actually computer printed entries for a Mcdonalds contest. Since then, sweepstakes have required "hand written" entries. This was originally inspired by a ealier frito-lay sweepstakes. More recently, this was tried again with a "submit the most entries" contest among southern california school for a free oingo boingo. Despite being much smaller than UCLA and USC, caltech managaged to submit more entries, but oingo boingo decided to backout of the concert (because they probably thought performing for free at a "tech" school would ruin their reputation)...
And you're missing the most recent stunt changing the hollywood sign to read caltech
Another thing of interest was the occasional bit of envy we experienced when MIT or Caltech were mentioned (eg, when a Boston local mentioned that he was going next semester to the local school, MIT). A small school with a little ego problem. I doubt there are many schools with such a large fragment of insecurity complex per capita.
I went to NMT from 89-93 during the reign of the Stealth Force Beta. I, too, messed around with elevators and steam tunnels. Ahh, memories. I never knew that they did the CSM banner... Operation Gaseous Research reminded me of a trick my buddies and I would do with powdered coffee creamer that we "liberated" from campus dining facilities. Basically, we'd make massive fireballs by dispersing the creamer over an open flame. We got caught by the Campus Police, but they were so impressed, they wanted a demonstration. I imagine there are lots of former "Techies" that lurk on this site...
You can find a few copies here
Hard to believe that one of these guys came from Clearfield, Pennsylvania. Our county (Clearfield, no less) is proud to have contributed a member of this team!
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
the other flabbergasting thing in the movie is the science is correct in almost every detail. when val kilmers's character gets an inspiration for a new kind of laser its actually a really clever idea that could plausibly work. even the equations and potential energy functions he draws on the board are the ones uniquely correct for an excimer type laser
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Stealth Force Beta? Is that like a real life Aqua Teen Hunger Force? Or are they more like the Thunderbirds?
</humor>
some of the best pranks i've done: -filled dorm door with concrete -put "the club" on the door to a profs office so he couldnt get out -made a fake order of evacuation for toxic mold scare for a few friends (had fake HASMAT lines, offical papers with seals and photoshopped signatures and everything including people in bunny suits telling them franticly to get out when they came in anwyay hehe) -wallpapered over door to other dorms then the next day removed the doors and did it again so when they tried to remove the paper by ripping down the door they fell on their ass a few other more evil than funny pranks that i'll not share heh...
Stealth Force Beta was countered by a group called The GSF. Some of us said it stood for "Green Sheep F---ers". An allusion to the lonely miners and their pasttimes in the glowing deserts of New Mexico.
I attended NMT for only two years - '99, '00 - but was a participant in GSF 'operations' during that time. The GSF, according to those older and wiser than I, was created by some, including significant members of the student union as an unofficial guerrilla group to compete/oppose STB. I'm not sure if STB was still around when I was there... GSF participated largely in whimsical pranks and actions bringing the schools administration's focus to various issues amongst the student body when regular campus politics just didn't the trick.
Btw, I've seen some comments that liberal arts students generally don't pull pranks like that... as a CS major when I was at NMT and now something of social science student, I'd have to say there's no empirical data to support that claim. It just takes a combination of creativity, free time (or negligence of other things), and some sense of adventure and/or poltiics. :)
NMT does have something of a complex when it comes to competing with MIT and the like... but it has good reason. It's EE dept has produced robotics teams that have regularly beat MIT, NASA engineers, and hundreds of other schools and institutions at a firefighting competition in Connecticut, it has significant ties to Linux for PPC, RTLinux (the patenting by Victor Yodaikenof that sending a lot of heat in the direction of NMT's mail servers from Slashdot readers/trolls) development by NMT faculty and grads, and several innovations and unique features associated with the school and certain departments also seem to get less attention than the same would elsewhere. Of course, it doesn't help to be small (less than 2000 undergrads) and stuck in the middle of the desert.
Socorro is a hell of a place.
http://machination.org/matt/index.cgi/2003/01/01#2 003-01-01_secretsocietiesNMT
Congrats guys. SFB has come into its own.
All of these stunts are grown from supressed creativity stewing in a high concentration of intelligence. Add equal parts boredom, youthful vigor, and raw dorkiness. Shake violently.
As an retired member of GSF, I am glad to see our lighthearted pranks and schemes get some of the credit they deserve.
I'll never forget sitting around around the Student Union Building with calculators and reference books trying to figure out expansion rates of various epoxies, volume of a giant statue-sized penis, and who had enough time between classes to carve a mold!
All this was done in the name of be-dildoing a main campus art piece just in time for parents to arrive for homecoming/49'ers!
I'll never forget the look on the sculpture instructor's face when we intruded upon her class to ask "70cm-ish long... 12 to 14cm-ish diameter... sort of round at one end... has to be flexible. Should we injection-mold, cast, or carve?" She put her head in her hands and sat down. The class looked at us like we just stepped out of a space ship, shouted hello in 407 languages, and pissed on their shoes.
She said something like is this going where I think its going, told us how to make a proper cast/mold and then told not to damage the patina on the statue.
The best part was a student government official retrieving his "missing toy" from campus police the morning after the celebration! (I still am stunned the gave it to him "no questions asked!")
Ben, Danny, Becky, Andy, Eric, and all the others... (you know who you are) it was a blast.
*sigh* I miss it sadly enough
bouncer
- Neil Steinberg
Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Bill Gates supposedly said that he only hired people from Yale and New Mexico Tech... back when he was in Albuquerque.
(NMT's CS department wasn't bad. A bunch of the PPC Linux stuff was done by a Tech CS guy. Only a couple of these guys were in the CS department though.)
Those were pretty tame pranks. UBC (U. of British Columbia, up in Canada) engineers have placed a beetle car on the top of the ubc clock tower (its a free standing tower, kind of like a mini-washington monument with a clock at the top), and later hung a beetle under the Lion's Gate Bridge (a fairly large suspension bridge).
Anarchists never rule
These pranks were unimaginative and not very entertaining. It's no more impressive than smashing a window.
Sensitive viewers should be aware that all haircuts in these photos date between 1989 and 1992.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
BTW, George Bush, Jr., now has a real Techer, ie confessed criminal Poindexter, working for him.
Do any other Techies remember raiding the boneyard for raw material? New Mexico Tech was a fun place at times, but the most explosive exploits were usually done out in the middle of the desert, not on campus. If you put a bunch of bright people together in a small town in the middle of nowhere, they will create their own fun.
B. Bunny: Maybe I shouldn't 'ave taken that left toin at Albuquerque?
...mentioned on the SFB homepage, there are other books available detailing similar goings-on at MIT & Caltech, as well as the aforementioned "If At All Possible, Involve A Cow".
Some years ago, I wrote a review of all of these books, complete with ordering information.
You can see this review HERE .
As soon as I hear back from the gentleman selling the SFB book, I'll be ordering a copy for myself. If the web pages are any indication, this will be a very good addition to the MIT/Caltech books,
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