How Thumpers Actually Work In The Dune Universe

Some say that the “Dune” franchise revolves around the Spice Melange (a magical drug that makes interstellar travel possible), but true “Dune” fans know the property revolves around sandworms. The giant worms that roam the desert planet of Arrakis are a thing of awe and beauty, a source of great opportunity and great fear. They can create spice and they can be used as a makeshift uber, but they can also eat you and they won’t feel bad about it either.

If you want to control the worms, you’ll need one tool most of all: the thumper. A mechanical device created by the Fremen, a thumper will quite literally thump the sand at a constant rate, making noise that will radiate through miles of sand and attract the nearest worm. The worm will come to eat the thumper, but that’s okay; the Fremen who activated it will almost certainly have moved out of the way by the time it arrives.

Why do the worms always come for the thumpers? Because the rhythm in which they pound the sand gives the impression that it’s a living thing making the noise, and living things make for good worm meals. The worms traveling underground are used to hearing random noises here or there, usually thanks to the wind throwing sand around, so they know to tune those natural noises out. (It’s sort of like how the aliens in “A Quiet Place” don’t bother to hunt by waterfalls or other natural sources of sound.)

In a sense, the thumpers are the total opposite of the sandwalking technique that Fremen are taught since childhood. To sandwalk is to time your footsteps irregularly, to blend into the sounds of the natural desert. The purpose of a thumper, meanwhile, is to not blend in at all. Sometimes, it’s used to hail a worm for taxi purposes; other times, it’s meant to hide the evidence of any crime that may have occurred in a specific spot. And sometimes, the thumper is part of a trap; the Fremen can lure an enemy to a location, only for the enemy to get there and realize too late that the thumper’s been set off, and a worm could be swallowing them up at any moment.

There are plenty of variations of thumpers, although we don’t get to see many of them in the “Dune” books. There’s one type of thumper that comes with a candle; when the candle burns out, the thumper is triggered and it starts attracting worms. (The candle takes about an hour to burn, although it could be designed to burn longer or shorter.) In addition to being a useful tool, thumpers help to display just how smart the Fremen are; they don’t have nearly as much access to technology as the Harkonnens or the Atreides’ factions have, but they’re still able to build technology this effective and complex. Combine the thumper technology with the Fremen’s amazing stillsuit technology, and you’ve got a group of people who are very clever about how they go about living amongst all that sand.

And where did “Dune” author Frank Herbert get the idea for thumpers? It’s possible the environmentalist writer was inspired by the American Woodcock, a real-life bird that lures worms above the ground using a very similar tactic. The bird’s approach is much smaller-scale and smaller in stakes, of course, but it’s hard not to be reminded of the thumpers as we watch these cute little guys stomp the ground: