Proton Pack
The Ghostbusters' nuclear-powered backpack and wand that pins a ghost in a proton stream so it can be trapped.
The Proton Pack is the defining piece of technology in the Ghostbusters organization, a fictional energy-based capture device used for controlling and lassoing ghosts. First depicted in the film Ghostbusters, it has a hand-held wand ("Neutrona Wand" or particle thrower) connected to a backpack-sized nuclear accelerator. Designed and built by Dr. Egon Spengler, it is a man-portable cyclotron system that controls a stream of highly focused and radially polarized protons, electrostatically controlling the negatively charged energy of a ghost. Dr. Peter Venkman refers to the proton packs in one scene as "unlicensed nuclear accelerators." The beam allows a Ghostbuster to contain and hold "negatively charged ectoplasmic entities," though the stream is also quite destructive to physical objects and can cause extensive property damage.
Quick Facts
- Source
- Ghostbusters
- Date
- 1984
- Creator
- Dan Aykroyd
- Harold Ramis
- and Stephen Dane
- Genre
- Science fiction, comedy
- Uses
- Used to hold/control ghosts
Lore & Background
The name "proton pack" is not used in the original movie at all, and is not used until the subway tunnel scene in Ghostbusters II, when Egon says that they should get their proton packs. The doorman to the Mayor's mansion also uses the term, asking if he can buy one for his little brother; Egon replies that "A proton pack is not a toy." In the 1984 novelization of Ghostbusters, the Proton Packs are mentioned, e.g., "Stantz hauls out the formidable weaponry from the back of the Ectomobile and the four men kit themselves up, buckling on their proton packs…" In the 2009 Ghostbusters game, Ray explains that the energy emitted by the proton stream helps to dissipate psychokinetic (PK) energy which ghosts use to manifest themselves.
According to a line spoken by Egon in Ghostbusters II, each pack's energy cell has a half-life of 5,000 years. In the cartoon series The Real Ghostbusters, the maximum power setting is "500,000 MHz," possibly referring to the rate of positron collisions. The packs also have a self-destruct mechanism capable of affecting at least a half-mile radius. For the 1997 animated spinoff Extreme Ghostbusters, Egon, with the help of Roland, Kylie and Eduardo, increased the packs' nuclear capability and modified the power system so packs required replaceable proton canisters. Kylie carried a not-as-powerful proton pistol instead of a normal pack.
Reader's Guide
In the first film the packs are the Ghostbusters' only weapon: they pin the Sedgewick Hotel ghost so it can be trapped, and at the climax all four streams are crossed at the dimensional gate, against Egon's earlier warning, to destroy Gozer's Stay Puft avatar and close the gateway. In Afterlife, Egon's ghost helps Phoebe repair a pack, and the veterans cross their streams again while Trevor's pack charges the buried trap field. In Frozen Empire, Phoebe electroplates her pack with brass to strengthen it against Garraka.
More in Equipment & Supernatural Forces
Elsewhere in Ghostbusters
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