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."

Comments

REAL GENIUS

[goombah99]

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.

I think it's cool...

[failrate]

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!

Steam tunnels

[derekb]

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.

Documentation

[Raetsel]

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.

  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.

I always thought that was pretty cool.

(He never did go bowling in that long underground hallway between buildings, though.)

Why is this being "dignified" by Slashdot?

[ThresholdRPG]

Why in the world is this a news item on Slashdot.

Just as an example, let us examine "Operation Up Your Shaft" (http://www.spril.com/StealthForceBeta/UpYourShaft .asp)

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 /. 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?

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 /.. 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.

Re:Why is this being "dignified" by Slashdot?

[No Such Agency]

A lot of "antics" (DMCA abuses, stupid M$ tricks) are reported here without neccessarily being condoned or encouraged. I see this more as a first hand account of what really constitutes a form of hacking. Thus, of interest to anyone who ever contemplated "exploring" an unsecured server, or wittily defacing a website to make a political point (and yes, misuse of university funds to unattractively landscape a campus area is a political issue). I have to agree that the elevator thing was ill-advised, but it's still interesting to read about.

Re:Why is this being "dignified" by Slashdot?

[0x0d0a]

Okay, there were only about two things in there that I'd really call dangerous to the point of being stupid. First, dangling someone by their ankles over a 60 foot drop to fix a mistake in a prank was stupid. If you didn't think to bring rope or some sort of climbing safety equipment, let it go. It's not worth risking your life.

The other *really* stupid one was trying to wriggle up a 6 inch gap between an active elevator and the wall when the students ended up in a pit at the bottom of the elevator. That was *dumb*. I say sit tight and cope. Another student with his hand on a (potentially operable) emergency stop button does not make it safe.

That being said, a lot of the other "safety" things they broke aren't that bad, like taking out lights and whatnot. Some of the things they did were pretty constructive (I'm not even sure that swiping the railroad ties that campus maintenance wouldn't haul away would be considered a prank.)

Some were pretty neat.

Good Ole New Mexico Tech

[jefu]

There are more stories around about NMT (more properly NMIMT - the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology) but for one reason or another I think its best not to retell them. But reading this story brought up a few amusing recollections. (I was once a professor there - during that time too - I knew most of those guys.)

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.

Re:Secret Society Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Civil SOL are usually shorter than criminal ones, but YMMV, and these guys may actually have screwed themselves on both accounts because for some laws the SOL starts at the time the prosecutor targets a person for investigation and prosecution, not from the time the crime is committed. The local DA may now have several years from the printing of this story to file a case.

There was also the GSF

[inditek]

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

Re:There was also the GSF

[amyk]

I really don't think that GSF had anything to do with a competition with SFB. Although I was not in either group, I was friends with members of both (and still with some) and privy to both of their exploits. (Tech from 88-92) Certainly GSF's Colorado School of Mines "M" being turned into "nMt" instigated SFB's "CSM" banner at Tech. But the key to that prank, imho, is that GSF's really believed that Colorado School of Mines made the trip down to Tech. They may deny it now but at the time, GSF were really impressed that they had made an impact on another "rival" school. Even at the time, most of us realized that Colorado wouldn't have the foggiest idea of any school with the initials of "NMT" or care.

Both groups had good pranks, for sure. But let's not forget Charlene and Victoria's group and their little pranks that included alphabetizing the periodic chart in the main lecture hall, putting shamrocks on all the desks in said hall, and painting the sidewalks with the school's president's name. And how about the group in '93 that "borrowed" the backhoe from p-plant and left it at the administration building? Even when I moved up to Albuquerque, I helped students with pranks at the University of New Mexico like the classic turn-their-wolf-into-a-sheep-with-cotton-balls-and honey.

My point is that when you're in the middle of the desert and there is nothing to do, we all find ways of amusing ourselves.