Stealth Force Beta

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Wednesday January 1, 2003 @03:00AM from the happy-new-year-now-go-back-to-bed dept.

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."

9 of 107 comments (clear)

REAL GENIUS by goombah99 · 2003-01-01 03:23 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.
1. Re:REAL GENIUS by goombah99 · 2003-01-01 04:15 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  here's a link to a photo of the caltech rosebowl flash card prank:
  here And a detailed explanation of how it was done here
  
  here's a write-up of the mcdonalds contest scam here
  
  other caltech stunts including the rosebowl score board prank, and the great barberpole theft. here
  
  --
  Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Re:Big schools still have the better pranks, thoug by Floyd+Turbo · 2003-01-01 03:40 · Score: 5, Informative

The MIT portion of which is well documented here. Great stuff.
I think it's cool... by failrate · 2003-01-01 03:44 · Score: 5, Interesting

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!
Re:Secret Society Eh? by Sycraft-fu · 2003-01-01 04:02 · Score: 5, Informative

"Groups of FBI, CIA, WhatHaveYou"

That's what the mean by "statute of limitations". In the US, most crimes have to be prosecuted within a certian number of years of their comission. If they aren't, they statute of limitations runs out and you can no longer be prosecuted for them.
Documentation by Raetsel · 2003-01-01 04:18 · Score: 5, Interesting
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.)
--

"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Re:Memorieees by mithras+the+prophet · 2003-01-01 05:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

That's not a hack, that's sheer idiocy. Drop stuff and it breaks. Whupty-fucking-doo, man.

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four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
Re:Pure Fluff by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-01 05:25 · Score: 5, Funny

Such "exploits" are assinine.
Lemme guess, you were one of those humorless business majors who saw the benefits of going to college strictly in terms of return on investment, weren't you...
They were lucky!!! by cwsulliv · 2003-01-01 05:40 · Score: 5, Informative

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.