A Heart Transmitter is a device which monitors the heartbeat of whomever it is attached to and can send out signals.
History[]
Area 7[]
During the years of preparation for his coup against the United States government, Charles "Caesar" Russell recognised that Presidential candidates, most often Senators, were constantly under stress and likely to encounter medical problems as a result. To exploit this, he developed a bio-metric device which could be planted onto a person's heart, and monitor their heartbeat while simultaneously sending out a signal.
Once the first heart transmitters were developed, he had them secretly implanted onto several potential Presidential candidates during routine surgeries. Because the devices were attached inert, they would remain undetected by security equipment or medical exams for years.
Shortly after his faked death, Caesar decided to ensure that the transmitters were fully operational, and proceeded to test the one that was attached to the heart of former Senator Jeremiah Woolf. Fixing the transmitter's signal to a bomb beneath Woolf's cabin, Caesar had Woolf pursued by his men until he was shot and taken to a hospital, where the former Senator died. The moment his heart stopped beating, the transmitter on his heart stopped signalling, setting off the bomb and killing Woolf's family.
Pleased by the success, and refusing to accept the possibility of failure once his coup began, Caesar had a transmitter attached to his own heart.
Shortly after the President and his detail arrived at Area 7, Caesar broadcast his announcement of a coup, and informed them that the heart transmitter on the President would send out a signal to a satellite, which, upon the President's death, would detonate several plasma warheads in the country's northern states. When the President protested that Caesar couldn't have possibly attached a transmitter on him or that it was capable of doing what he was saying, Caesar revealed the unusual circumstances of Woolf and his family's death was in fact his doing. With that, Caesar activated the transmitter on the President's heart, as well as his own.
Once the attack on the President's people began, the Marines Schofield, Gant, Mother and Brainiac found themselves in a hanger containing an AWACs plane. Using the equipment inside, they were able to confirm that Caesar hadn't lied about the transmitter due to its irregular broadcast pattern.
Later on, Gant came up with a plan to create a decoy transmitter so that they could potentially trick the receiving satellite into thinking that the President's transmitter would still be operational. After modifying the black box from another AWACs plane, they set out to recover Caesar's remote so that they could switch off the President's transmitter and turn on their decoy.
When Caesar saw that his coup had failed, he broadcast a final message, revealing his own transmitter. Realising that they needed to keep Caesar alive to keep the warheads from detonating, Schofield re-entered Area 7 to confront him. While under attack from the rogue General, Gant found Caesar's remote, and successfully switched off his transmitter, simultaneously activating her decoy, allowing Schofield to shoot Caesar.
After the incident, and once the satellite transmitting to the warheads was destroyed, the President underwent surgery to have the heart transmitter removed.
Attributes[]
The Heart Transmitters are powered by the kinetic motion produced by a subject's heartbeat. When activated, they are able to send out signals which can be detected by desired sources such as satellites in orbit. So long as the person with the transmitter is alive, the signal will continue to be sent out until either the subject is killed or the device is switched off.
As they needed to be planted on unknowing subjects, the transmitters can be switched off in order to avoid detection equipment used by security agencies, and would only appear as tissue buildup on medical x-rays.
Trivia[]
- It is not mentioned if the others whom Caesar had implanted with heart transmitters were identified and also had theirs removed following Caesar's failed coup.