'Black Panther' Tech

'Black Panther' Tech Isn't as Sci-Fi as It Seems

Some of the early ancestors of Wakanda's advanced tech can already be found in the real world.

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By Darren Orf

Black Panther is great. If you haven’t seen it yet, remedy that situation immediately. If you did see it and you left the theater fascinated by the tech-laden paradise of Black Panther’s fictional Wakanda, then I’ve got good news for you—Wakandan tech isn’t as sci-fi as you’d think.


Vibranium, the rare element that gives Wakanda its super-tech powers, isn’t real, of course. However many of the vibranium-powered technological wonders in the film are based on things we've already got IRL, at least in an early version. Here are six Wakandan wonders in the making.

Magnetic Levitating Transportation

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Wakandans uses electromagnetic trains to move the volatile vibranium (they appear to use it for public transportation as well). In the real world, Maglev trains aren't quite as efficient as they are in Black Panther, but they have been transporting humans on Earth for decades. Although an inventor received the first patent for modern electromagnetic transportation in the 1960s, the first commercial system wouldn’t be built until the 1980s and a high-speed train wouldn’t debut until 2004.

Maglev (magnetic levitation) trains work by magnetic poles repelling and propelling a train to incredible speeds. Because of the frictionless design, Maglev trains go much faster than traditional ones with much less turbulence along the way.

Japan and Germany have become pioneers in Maglev transportation. Japan’s Chuo Shinkansen, for example, is the world’s fastest train, traveling at a max speed of 375 mph. When Japan hosts the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Maglev trains will have a global opportunity to show off just how futuristic they really are.

Remotely Piloted Cars and Aircraft

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Black Panther is one of the few Marvel films that truly embraces the future of drones—and that’s a future we are more and more familiar with. In the movie, character pilot cars and planes remotely using a holographic project of the cockpit. In real life, remote-controlled Predator or Reaper drones piloted from across the globe have been fighting wars for years. Drones are such a fixture of the modern battlefield that even cash-strapped military outfits like ISIS have custom built drones for the battlefield.

But Wakandan vibranium not only controls things remotely, it also can forcibly take control of vehicles, turning them into invaluable allies. This isn’t so far future either. With the dawn of the smart car, several instances of car hacking have caused government agencies, including the FBI and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to issue warnings about the threat.

Wired demonstrated in 2015 how such an attack could happen. Although real-life car hacking is much less slick than flicking a purple-glowing gizmo on the hood of a car, its effects are not fiction.

A Kinetic-Absorbing Supersuit

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The Wakandan tech that saves Black Panther’s ass more than once is an armored suit with vibranium woven within its fabric. The fictional suit can absorb and redistribute kinetic energy onto unsuspecting foes. It also makes for some killer-looking explosions.

While the whole “punch me until I explode” thing remains safely fictional, the next-generation of body armor is already in the works. In 2016, the U.S. Army announced a contract for body armor created from the silk of genetically altered silkworms. Seriously.

The main advantage of a Dragon Silk suit (yes, that is the name) is that it would be much more flexible than current materials like Kevlar. Although Kevlar is still a stronger material, it has an elasticity of 3 percent, whereas Dragon Silk reaches 30 to 40 percent.

Kraig Biocraft, the company behind these super silk outfits, delivered its first samples to the military in May 2017. Three months later, the Army upped its research investment. I guess they liked what they saw.

Active Camouflage and Cloaking

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The one piece of Wakandan tech that would make researchers around the world extremely jealous is active camouflage, which the country uses to cloak its ships and cities. Simply put, humans don’t have anything quite like it, but that doesn’t mean we’re not trying.

A 2015 research paper from the University of Berkeley detailed a “thin skin cloak” that can hide incredibly small objects, the latest in a long line of science experiments seeking to build a real invisibility cloak. The University of California-San Diego also developed tech from Teflon that could also cloak things like drones.

Many of the military’s modern “cloaking” technologies are really just clever bits of obfuscation. They don't make planes or cars or boats invisible; they simply trick or jam radar and other tracking instruments. The stealth destroyer USS Zumwalt for instance, which can trick enemy radar into thinking it’s a much smaller ship, is almost too stealthy and had to add giant reflectors so that local mariners wouldn’t crash into it.

Last year the Air Force also called for solutions on how to effectively mask its aerial refueling tankers when in combat “to alter the plane's radar image, or waveform.” But I’m sure the Air Force would settle for Wakanda’s invisibility tech in a pinch.

Holographic Skype and VR Racing

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Vibranium allows the Wakandans to talk through wristbands in a sort of holographic Skype. Ignoring the obvious smartwatch comparison, this tech isn’t complete fiction, either, and the minds behind real Skype are the ones making it happen.

Microsoft’s Hololens AR system is the most advanced commercial headset that blends our reality with augmented reality (aka real world holograms), and yes, you can use AR Skype. Other companies like Magic Leap have promised similar tech in the near future, but have yet to deliver anything concrete.

As for those amazing virtual reality driving sequences, the ever-growing VR industry is quick at work creating tactile experiences from the safety of your living room, or in Black Panther’s case, your hi-tech, underground lab. Just Google search “VR Racing,” and you’ll see what I mean.

Of course Wakanda can achieve all this technical wonder without the need of a bulky headset, and that’s a future that still remains safely science fiction.

Spinal Regeneration

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Although vibranium provides Wakanda with futuristic weapons, transportation, and communication, it also comes with some pretty miraculous medicinal side effects, like the ability to repair traumatic spinal injuries. Although we don't have a “quick fix” for spinal injury like the Wakandans do, scientists are beginning to have a much stronger understanding why spinal injuries can be so difficult to fix.

About half a million people each year suffer from some form of spinal injury. The problem is trying to get neurons to regrow axons, which help link neurons together. According to Nature, stem cell research on rats has shown that certain stem cells can help facilitate axon regeneration and even transform into new neurons themselves.

It’s far from a one-pill solution, but it’s a small rodent-sized step in the right direction.