Tribute Pedestals in the Hunger Games
Were there pressure plates and landmines in the Second Quarter Quell or not? A totally unnecessary discussion about it all.
Starting from what Katniss says in THG:
"Sixty seconds. That’s how long we’re required to stand on our metal circles before the sound of a gong releases us. Step off before the minute is up, and land mines blow your legs off."
"Obviously, I can’t go strolling into that mess without blowing myself sky-high. As for sending in a burning arrow, that’s more laughable than ever. The mines are set off by pressure. It doesn’t have to be a lot, either. One year, a girl dropped her token, a small wooden ball, while she was at her plate, and they literally had to scrape bits of her off the ground."
"I slip out of the bushes and cross to one of the round metal plates that lifted the tributes into the arena. The ground around it has been dug up and patted back down. The land mines were disabled after the sixty seconds we stood on the plates, but the boy from District 3 must have managed to reactivate them."
Effie in SotR: “Remember, Haymitch, don’t step off your plate for sixty seconds!”
Haymitch doesn’t specify whether anything will happen to him if he doesn’t comply to that rule even when he's told, which I think would be a fair thing to at least cross a tribute's mind maybe once in the whole ordeal. He doesn’t remind himself not to move, and so we’re not given any context for those sixty seconds beyond the simple rule that you’re not supposed to step off
Panache in the movie: *throws cape off* *is completely fine* Panache in the book: “I see Panache’s head twist as a daffodil-yellow bird perches on his shoulder and twitters."
The weight change did not trigger an explosion in the book, nor did movement
Yes, the cape falls to the ground beside the pedestal, but that still changes the weight on it. We could also argue that this setup prevents tributes from throwing their tokens at someone else’s pedestal to trigger an explosion. So the weight on each pedestal is likely now locked to how the tribute stepped on it initially: once they step onto the platform, the pressure their weight applies is registered, and only disturbances beyond that, like stepping off or taking something off to mess with others or have an advantage, would trigger the landmines.
For Panache, neither throwing his cape nor having a bird land on him caused any change, so I think there's just no mechanism there.
If there were, and if the pressure plates were only triggered from a change in added weight, I think Haymitch and many others would have worried about Careers, or even other tributes, throwing a token at their pedestals to set them off while staying safe themselves. I also think quite a few tributes might have considered trying it. But again, it’s not even a concern in Haymitch’s narration.
Haymitch in the SotR movie: *shifts and repositions in place**also completely fine*
And in the book too, there was a bunny right there. At the moment he wasn't worried, and even if he was lost in the chemical air--a few seconds later, he was clearer-headed and still didn’t worry about the animal jumping on his plate and setting off an explosion.
So far, the evidence seems to suggest:
Shuffling or repositioning yourself does not set off the pressure plates in either Hunger Games
Dropping a cape or a bird landing on you, therefore changing your weight, in the SOTR timeline of the 50th Hunger Games does not set off the plates (if there were any)
Dropping your token on your own plate, however, does set off them off prior to the 74th Hunger Games and the land mines around the metal plate explode
There is a rule not to step off your plate, and there has to be some kind of consequence, but it’s not explicitly mentioned. It’s probably assumed that a Peacekeeper or some other mechanism would take you out, like in the 1-10th HG.
Haymitch in the book: “Are you sending me in there with explosives?”
If there had been explosives/landmines under the plates in the arena, Beetee might’ve suggested them as an option and told Haymitch to dig them up. It would’ve been far less risky to use something already in the arena than to try smuggling explosives in by replicating tribute tokens and it would’ve required far less work.
And Beetee himself used what was in his arena to electrocute his opponents. We know he found electrical components in the Cornucopia, but in my headcanon, it could also partly be due to gamemaker negligence or arena complications. Considering the time period, barely a decade after arenas were first being built, there had to be some exposed wiring or a stray battery lying around in his arena. Just makes more sense to me that way.
(It’s also curious that the Gamemakers added this feature at all and that it can still be recovered after the countdown and used again after everything that happened with Haymitch--like the D3 boy does in the 74th HG even after someone has already tried to blow up the arena. Then again, new security measures and technological advances probably made the Games’ underground behind-the-scenes operations much safer)
One final thing:
50th Hunger Games: The plates are glass.
“Effie guides me to the tube and centers me on a glass plate.”
(in the movie, they are red platforms with a golden half circle around. in fact, they looked like mini throne seats to me.)
74th Hunger Games: The plates are metal.
"That’s how long we’re required to stand on our metal circles."
Fire‑resistant metal is listed as the material of the pedestals on the THG wiki
With everything above considered, there is obviously a “don’t step off your plate for the first sixty seconds” rule in place, but I think it existed before the mines were introduced--likely sometime between the 50th and 74th Hunger Games.
Again, I think the pressure plates respond both to overall weight changes on the pedestal and to any force applied on or off it--making them extremely sensitive, as Katniss says. Maybe they’d even go off if you stomped your feet a bit hard on the plate or something.
Stepping off early would still get you taken out, but by the time of the second Quarter Quell, I don’t think landmines linked to pressure plates had been implemented yet. A reasonable middle ground is that landmines existed earlier than the pressure plates, but were triggered manually by the Gamemakers from the control room as they oversee the countdown, with pressure plates likely coming later to automate the timing and ensure the mines went off at the intended moment.
Most importantly: it’s the Hunger Games. They are constantly changing and evolving; from arenas to mutts to hijackings, body doubles, and everything else. There are just as many incompetent people overseeing and working on them as there are capable ones. Mistakes are made repeatedly, yet it’s clear some workers learn from them. After all, before SotR, most of us never considered that the tribute parade could go awry, a tribute could be replaced with a body double, or Gamemakers could be killed in the arena. Through trial and error, the Games and the generations of people running them continued to evolve from the 10th to the 75th, until the Capitol generation became so arrogant and complacent that they regarded themselves as completely untouchable. By then, the Hunger Games had shifted from punishment and revenge for one generation, to patriotic duty and necessary evil for the next, and finally to nothing more than reality TV entertainment.
Back to the topic.
Here's my verdict: there were no landmines under or around the tribute pedestals in the 50th Hunger Games, nor were they pressure sensitive plates. Thanks to technological developments, I think they were gradually implemented sometime between the 55th and 65th Games.
I mostly stick to book canon when I write, but I thought some details from the movie are worth going over.
I haven’t done a full re-read of SOTR with this in mind--just skimmed the parts where tribute plates and explosives were mentioned-- so feel free to let me know if I’ve missed or overlooked anything!
‧₊˚ ⋅. ᯓ★ ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Also I'm side eyeing this from Katniss now that we have SotR:
"The land mines were disabled after the sixty seconds we stood on the plates, but the boy from District 3 must have managed to reactivate them. I’ve never seen anyone in the Games do that. I bet it came as a shock even to the Gamemakers."
How much do you want to bet someone already tried that? I’m usually skeptical of most of the rebellious tribute takes that pop up after SotR--at least I don’t think that everything everyone saw happened in every Games was the result of tributes trying to rebel.
But with the landmine thing, maybe someone did try, and either failed or was stopped. Beetee would’ve encouraged using the arena’s limitations to a tribute’s advantage. Maybe not as explicitly after the SQQ disaster, but I think the lesson would still be there. If he coached the boy tribute in the 74th Hunger Games, that'd make perfect sense to me.
But since the D3 boy used it against other tributes rather than against the Games, the Capitol had no problem showing him utilizing it on TV. Mayhaps there is something to consider here as well (I know I am)
