Editing Setting:Nutopia/Fluff (section)

==Nanotechnology==

There are two broad categories of nanites in the world of Nutopia: foglets and universal (dis)assemblers.

The foglets are lighter-than-air nanomachines that form an cloud around the hiver. The cloud allows the hiver to send his assemblers through the foglets to anywhere within the cloud, however an average hiver can produce an cloud that is only about 10 meters of spherical volume at maximum even dispersion. Most settlements and any functional high tech manufacturing facility, on the other hand, probably have their air full of utility fog. The foglets purpose is to act as an bridge, communication- and an powerline for assemblers going from their hive to their target. The foglets aren't terribly smart and cannot distinguish between commands from friendly or hostile source, and as such anyone or thing capable projecting nanomachines is capable of doing so within the utility fog.

The universal (dis)assemblers can manipulate individual atoms and chemical bonds around their immediate surroundings, according to the instructions from their hive. Compared to foglets the assemblers are considerably more intelligent because by micromanaging every single nanite would require an supercomputer to build even the most homogeneous and simple objects, therefore the assemblers have an limited group intelligence and an onboard database that allows them to identify materials and assemble even the most complex chemical compounds by themselves with little instructions from the hive. The assemblers also have several different kinds of sensors that when using them as an group the assemblers can give very detailed information of their surroundings.

The "universal" in The "universal (dis)assemblers" is no joke, if it can be accomplished by manipulating matter it can be done. An average hive can assemble an delicious meal from dirt, clean firearms without disassembling them, heal wounds, and turn an bandit accosting him into an puddle of protein, but this comes at a price: all action by nanites require energy, and while the assemblers can utilize ambient energy in their immediate surroundings to an extent, most of the energy is provided by their hive. This is problematic for hivers even as all of their cells are modified (either genetically or nanotechnologicaly) into organic self-recharging batteries, an average hiver would find himself quickly exhausted if he devoted all his energy to simple brute force disintegration. A hiver's flexibility in terms of tasks they can do simultaneously at any one time is limited both by their own capabilities for multitasking control and the simple volume of nanites they can contain at any one time. Some of these problems can be alleviated by portable bio-electricity batteries and special hiver exoskeletons that store extra energy and nanites. In addition the special cerebral implants for nanite control common to all hivers can be loaded with low level VI software routines that can execute specific functions (i.e. "liquefy", "stabilize that guy") with little input from the hiver.

In a world with such adept computer wizards the possibility of nanite swarms being simply taken over and turned to malicious uses is well understood. To counteract this several simple security measures are in place. The communication between a Hiver and their swarms is omnidirectional (figuring out functional tightbeam communication to a swarm is something of an engineering holy grail that remains unattained), and thus easily picked up, it is conversely heavily encrypted. A diligent cracker could of course, given time, break said encryption, but would find that in order to prevent mutations or corruption in the nanites, all their programming is stored in ROM (Read Only Memory) and have an tiny bit of RAM to process commands. The programming is intentionally brittle, any changes to such simply resulting in the nanite becoming nonfunctional. More nanites can only be constructed within the Hiver's own stacks, and these operate on a closed, hardwired circuit within the Hiver's own body. To hijack these systems wirelessly would require a full body/mind takeover well outside the capability of most crackers.

The nanites are an exceptionally efficient in their design: every atom in their bodies pull an double-duty, this however leaves them with very little in the way of redundancy or backup systems. This means that an individual nanites are rather easy to disable, for example even an weak EMP in the vicinity of the nanites can erase their command buffer, as the nanites become inert if they aren't ordered to do something as an security measure. Ionizing radiation also does an number on the nanites, even small amount alpha particles slowly corrupts the programming of nanites and also the particles interfere with assembly of new nanites and other things the hiver or the maker is creating. Beta particles, gamma and x-rays are even worse, causing nanites to breakdown completely from far smaller amount of radiation that would pose an lethal threat to even unaugmented humans.