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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts

Android Safety Mechanism  
  A device that temporarily incapacitates an android.  

How can you defend yourself against a superior android?

"In my purse," she said, " I have a mechanism which our autofac on Mars builds as an... emergency safety... while they're putting a newly made andy through its routine inspection checks. Get it out. It resembles an oyster....

"Is this it?" He held up a metallic sphere with a button-stem projecting.

"That cancels an android into catalepsy," Rachel said, eyes shut. "For a few seconds. Suspends its respiration; yours, too, but human can function without respiring - perspiring? - for a couple of minutes, but the vagus nerve of an andy -"

"I know." He straightened up. "The android autonomic nervous system isn 't as flexible at cutting in and out as ours. But as you say, this wouldn't work for more than five or six seconds."

"Long enough," Rachel murmured, 'to save your life.... If Roy Baty shows up here, you can be holding that in your hand and you can press the stem on that thing...."

Technovelgy from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick.
Published by Doubleday in 1968
Additional resources -

Compare to the restraining bolt from Star Wars (1976) by George Lucas.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip K. Dick
  Tech news articles related to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
  Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick

Android Safety Mechanism -related news articles:
  - EU Debates Kill Switches For Robots
  - Jibo Home Robot Says Goodbye, Is Killswitched

Articles related to Weapon
Drone Bombings In Moscow Foreseen 100 Years Ago
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LANIUS Loitering Drone Munition Scouts And Maps
Israel Deploys Sharp Shooter AI-powered Robot Guns

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