Musing: ATM machines in a superhero universe

[Marcus Impudite]

Going through my copy of Villain Amok recently, I took a look at the stats listed for an ATM machine in bank robberies section of the book and had a thought: While 4 BODY and 5 DEF is definitely nothing to sneeze at in our reality (and I do realize those stats are meant to be what most ATM machines would realistically have), in a world that for some time has had people running around who can launch devastatingly powerful bolts of energy from their hands and/or bench press 18-wheelers, wouldn't you think the companies that make ATMs might at least consider ways of making their products a bit tougher? Hell, even someone like Pulsar could become a nightmare for the banks if he went around blasting their ATMs open and stealing all the cash inside. Not to mention, on top of all the stolen money, I don't imagine it would be cheap to repair/replace (replace seems more likely) a machine that's been breached by said supercriminal.

 

Any thoughts?

[Rebar]

My thought is that, in a world where people are running around that can fire energy bolts from their hands, the fragility of ATMS is the LEAST of their problems. ALL forms of violence and crime would be scaled up by an order of magnitude. And that means crimes much more heinous than grand theft will be scaled up too.

 

Frankly, the idea of a demigod deciding he wants a few grand in small bills is an artificial construct, made up by the genre, to keep things normal. If there were such a demigod for real, he would set his sights a LOT higher than cash. He'd take over the world.

 

And therein lies the problem. The whole genre is highly contrived specifically so that we get serial, episodic action. The moment you pick at one thread of the artificiality, the whole thing will start to unravel.

 

It can be fun picking (and modifying our games). But there's not much logic to it aside from the fun.

[Lord Liaden]

I've read of criminals in the real world ripping ATMs out of bank walls with forklifts or tow-truck hooks, and driving off with them. That possibility doesn't seem to have prompted the banks to put more armor on their machines.

 

I imagine every business assesses the expense of heavier security precautions versus the likelihood of a crime and the potential loss. In most comic-book worlds, superhumans with that type and level of power are even less common than forklifts. And ATMs don't carry more than a tiny fraction of the assets held in bank vaults.

[Old Man]

Sounds like a perfect excuse to mount tasers and sentry guns on all the ATMs.

[massey]

Yeah, I think it depends on how common villains with powers are.  A quick Google search says that there are about 371,000 ATMs in the United States.  It would probably be a lot cheaper to just eat the losses than try to refit all the different units with armor.  Are you seriously going to spend all that money giving each ATM 15/15 armor?  What do you do when a desolid guy comes along and just sticks his hand inside?  Or a mind controller who just waits until your service guy comes along to restock the machine?

[Marcus Impudite]

Perhaps it would depend on the size of the banks in question?

 

The smaller local banks and credit unions probably wouldn't care to spend the money on upgraded units as some have already pointed out, though the bigger banks might consider it if too many of theirs get smashed up in too short a time and someone makes a strong enough case for it at the next meeting.

[Marcus Impudite]

Sounds like a perfect excuse to mount tasers and sentry guns on all the ATMs.

I like how you think.

[Nothere]

Its the Reed Richards is useless problem. (speaking in a deep and dramatic voice.) In a world where people have superpowers the world changes. Take flight for example. You could make a lot of changes to rules about use of air space, and privacy laws, and how people change building design. And that's just for one power. To make alterations for every power you would have to alter the setting dramtically. Not as much as if everyone had access to Reed Richards tech, but enough. The easiest thing to do if just declare there are too few for it to be feasible to make a dramatic alteration.

[Beast]

I'd say more ways of scanning/ IDing the crook and let the heroes catch them, then add on the charges

[Lawnmower Boy]

Sounds like a perfect excuse to mount tasers and sentry guns on all the ATMs.

 ...I was just going to like this when I remembered that the vendor won't even let us have the keys to the DVD rental machine at work, so it's likely that we wouldn't get controls of the ATM turret, either.

 

....And it's right next to Customer Service, too!

[Tasha]

 ...I was just going to like this when I remembered that the vendor won't even let us have the keys to the DVD rental machine at work, so it's likely that we wouldn't get controls of the ATM turret, either.

 

....And it's right next to Customer Service, too!

That could be an amusing day at work at the customer service counter. When the defense system on the nearby ATM machine go berserk and assume that anyone coming within 5-8' is an enemy. Zot! another jerk coming tell a poor customer service person off goes unconscious. Unconscious people start stacking up by the ATM like cord wood.

[Sundog]

I think the real result would just be slightly higher premiums on insuring the ATM. The banks might well grouse and complain, but the fact is they wouldn't put amounts of money out in machines without insuring it all.

[Armitage]

It's like the old joke about drive-through ATMs having Braille on the keys.  The reality is that it's not worth the expense to create separate ATMs for walk-up and drive-through, so they use one machine, with Braille, for both.

The number of ATMs robbed using superpowers would likely be so small that it wouldn't be worth the expense to make them supervillain resistant.

[Lawnmower Boy]

That could be an amusing day at work at the customer service counter. When the defense system on the nearby ATM machine go berserk and assume that anyone coming within 5-8' is an enemy. Zot! another jerk coming tell a poor customer service person off goes unconscious. Unconscious people start stacking up by the ATM like cord wood.

 

"Assume"?

 

We've pretty much gone to not staffing customer service at all. Which understandably upsets people, who keep trying to go up to the counter in order to be customer served. I can see their point (unless they're trying to return a $4.99 item. Suck it up, people!)

 

But, come about 9PM, when I'm filling the merchandising ends across from the station, people will walk up to me and ask if I can get them cigarettes from behind Customer Service. Yes, I th ink yes I can. And so can the two cashiers standing at their tills reading Archie digests. Which you should know, dear customer, on account of the "Please Use Next Checkstand" signs festooning the desk. Important lesson: someone who needs to buy cigarettes at a strip mall grocery store at 9PM is likely to have some ...issues.

[SKJAM!]

A thought--perhaps a bank might secretly upgrade one/some of their ATMs with different antisupertheft gear, then if/when a superchump gets caught, publicize the heck out of it, and gloss over the fact that they haven't installed it on all their machines.

[esampson]

If I, as a GM, had to deal with this what I would probably assume is that those are the defenses for the machine proper (i.e. that's what you need to do to make the machine non-functional). I would have to guess that in a post-metahuman world the money would be locked up in something with the defenses of a safe which is most likely set into the ground and when the ATM is used money is fed from the 'safe' into the machine. If someone is strong enough to just grab the machine and rip it out of the wall and run off with it the money remains behind, safe and locked up. It won't stop everyone but it should provide a fair amount of extra security for a moderate price.

 

Of course this is a world where there is enough metahuman presence to warrant such a thing yet not enough metahuman presence to merit (or provide) stronger defenses. It is quite conceivable to have worlds where the metahuman presence is so low (something akin to Rising Stars, the Elementals, or the 4400 or Alphas with stronger special abilities than were exhibited in those shows) there wouldn't be any real change or worlds where the metahuman presence is so high (City of Heroes, PS238) that there might be radical changes (super alloys and force fields to protect the machines, metahuman guards, etc.).