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The Proton Pack is a fictional piece of nuclear accelerative machinery created by the Ghostbusters that serves as their primary tool in the 1984 film of the same name for the purpose of "busting" ghosts. It has a hand-held wand ("Proton Gun" or particle thrower) connected to a backpack-sized particle accelerator.
The proton pack functions by "concentrating protons (though in the first movie it is referred to as "positron collider" once, and the gun is also called a "neutrona wand"), using them to attack negatively charged ectoplasmic entities". This is, it should be noted, technobabble. In practical terms, the proton gun fires a stream of energy that allows a wielder to snare a ghost, holding it in place so it can be positioned above a trap for capture. Dr. Egon Spengler designed the pack, and he and Dr. Ray Stantz built it. A cut scene from Ghostbusters showed Egon plugging the pack into a wall outlet to recharge it, only to have the plug melt.
The Ghostbusters' dialogue indicates that it operates similarly to a cyclotron, in that it produces a high-powered stream of charged particles. In contrast to a real cyclotron (which produces well collimated streams of particles), the beam from a proton pack tends to curve wildly (though it still stays within the general area the user is aiming at), is quite destructive to physical objects and can cause extensive property damage.
According to a line pronounced by Egon in Ghostbusters II, each pack's energy cell has a half-life of five thousand years. Knobs on the main stock of the Proton Pack can perform various functions to customize the proton stream, including adjustments for stream intensity, length, and degrees of polarization. According to the cartoon, the maximum power setting for the Proton Packs is "500,000 megahertz" and they have a self-destruct mechanism capable of affecting at least a half-mile radius. The cartoon also made proton packs less efficient with power cells, allowing them to run out of energy when appropriate for dramatic tension.
Dr. Peter Venkman refers to the Proton Packs in one scene as "unlicensed nuclear accelerators", but a cut scene from the script states that there is no nuclear material involved, but rather a static discharge.
Crossing the streams was initially discouraged, as Egon believed that "total protonic reversal" would occur: this effect would have catastrophic results (see quote above). However, in a desperate effort to stop the powerful Gozer the Gozerian[1], the Ghostbusters performed a simultaneous 4-fold crossing directed into the portal, causing total protonic reversal in their dimension and "brackish" areas, but not affecting the molecular structure of our dimension. When the Ghostbusters crossed their four streams, they aimed directly into the inter-dimensional portal, which then exploded every molecule of Gozer (including his psychic influence) and forced it back through the dimension window from where it entered. The portal itself collapsed and exploded when Gozer was destroyed.
Proton packs were created by the prop department of Columbia Pictures. They are made of molded fiberglass shells on aluminium backplates (or "motherboards") bolted to military surplus A.L.I.C.E. frames. The basic shape was sculpted from foam and then a rubber mould was made of it, from which fibreglass shells were pulled. The "wand" had an extending barrel mechanism and the electronics were quite advanced for the time. They were then finished with various surplus 1960's resistors, pneumatic fittings, hoses and ribbon cable, as well as surplus warning labels and custom made metal fittings. The overall wieght of these props is said to be around 35lbs. These "hero" props were substituted in stunt scenes by flimsy foam rubber pulls from the same mould. The proton packs have a lightbar with 15 blue scrolling lights in a box on the left-hand side and 4 red lights in the circular "cyclotron" portion of the bottom of the prop that light up in rotation. The "wand" also featured numerous light features - the most elaborate versions had fluorescent bargraphs, incandescent bulbs, and strobing flashes in the tip for the visual effects crew to sync the infamous 'streams' to.
Some of the Packs from Ghostbusters 1 were used in the followup, Ghostbusters II; these packs were slighty redressed with a black crank knob and thinner ribbon cable. The angle of the gun, or "wand"'s mount was changed to pitch foward slightly, in order to make the prop easier for the actor to use. In addition to these redressed props, one of the originals was hastilly cast as a buck to produce basic, lightwieght "midgrade" props (as a solution to complaints by the actors about the weight of the original prop). These midgrade pieces featured many details cast in as part of the mould, instead of separate fittings. The electronics and mechanisms were also cut down greatly, reducing the total wieght. The original GB1 props would appear in close ups; the midgrade in all other scenes, and new rubber "stunt" packs were produced for whenever the actor needed to take a fall. Several GB2 packs have surfaced for auction - at least one rubber stunt, and one fibreglass midgrade prop. The auctioned midgrade prop was lost shortly after sale in an airport baggage mishap [2]. The piece was documented before it's loss, and revealed much of the shodding casting techniques used in it's creation. All 3 varitions of the GB2 pack have been displayed at various Planet Hollywood restaurants around the US.
Many movie prop replica communities have sprung up regarding proton pack research and contain various methods and plans for constructing a replica proton pack, including:
Early script descriptions of the proton pack stated each pack had two neutrona wands, strapped to the wrists, rather than one, held like a gun.
Toy proton packs were formerly made by Kenner and available in toyshops. They consisted of a plastic pack and gun, with a yellow foam cylinder attached to the front of the gun to represent the beam.
A weapon strongly resembling the proton pack appears in the computer game Half-Life, where it is called the Gluon gun, it is also sometimes called quantum de-stabilizer. The gun's object identifier is weapon_egon, but this name is never visible to the player. This would appear to be a reference to the character Egon Spengler, who created the device in the movie.
In Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft there is a weapon known as '''Egan's Blaster''' which has a special effect against ghosts and other undead in the game. Again, it is a likely homage to Egon Spengler and the Ghostbusters universe.