- A Diffrent View
- A Type V Dilema
- Battle of Vegas
- Call of the Anarchy Zones
- Central Gulf Part One
- Clean Slate
- Dead Ex
- Domain of a Thousand Corridors
- Interm Setting Ideas (Don't worry, the Anachy Zones are comming...)
- Kappa Hunt
- Not Quite Jane Goodall
- Obsession
- Radiation Hazard
- Redux
- Rough Drafts
- Ruby Ridge
- Seen the Rest? Now try NEST!
- Short Ones
- Tech Singualrity
- The (Abridged) Zone Survival Guide
- The Director's Office.
- The Truth
- Type Four
- Vegas Preview
Clean Slate
Submitted by Chainsaw Aardvark on Wed, 2007-01-31 21:49.
Settings
They say evil prevails when good men do nothing. Actually, there is no they - the quote comes from Edmund Burke, and it goes along the lines of "When bad men congregate, the good must do so as well - or else be wiped out piecemeal." Yet, though my associates and I congregate is response to the deplorable conditions of our times, we are the ones called evil.
What is with these people - so quick to condemn us? Do I have a handlebar mustache, a black hat, and a propensity for tying fair maidens to the railroad tracks? No.
The metaphorical button. Codes, Communication, Command. Thermonuclear.
Somehow bombs became the enemy, the boogy man, the boo in the corner.
Wipe out humanity. Feh.
Life on this planet is tougher than anyone thinks. Ice ages, asteroid impacts, the magnetic polls switching. All the first microbes on this planet were anaerobic - Oxygen was a deadly toxin. Now its 20% of the atmosphere.
One third of Europe perished in the Black Plague? That means two thirds survived - despite the crops failures, work shortages, bad winters, and raiders. Best medical advice of the time was to stick flowers in your pockets and leeches on your crotch. Yet Europe continued to be the center of the world for another 600 years - till America took over.
We can do a nice clean sweep. Cauterize the wounds with a stellar hot fireball. Call me a ghoul? There's literal walking dead out there! Aliens with bioweapons, EM Pulse bombs, and rocks from space.
30 years of upheaval from global warming hasn't killed us either. Nor has terrorism, nuclear power, PCBs, the loss of the nuclear family, violent movies, or homosexuality. I for one celebrate our survival. And if there's something I can do to avoid us withering away, then by god I will do it.
They're the ones who want to prolong the suffering, who underestimate humanity's vigor.
Its five years after the dead rose, and I can still get coffee. No more shipping, no satellites, some double digit percentage of the world's population dead or living a sub-par existence, yet when I wake up at exactly 6:35 am, my caffeine fix is waiting on the counter for me.
We have the way. We have the will. We have too many pessimists.
Care for a latte?
» add new comment | by Chainsaw Aardvark | 433 reads
I thought so
Submitted by SheikhJahbooty on Wed, 2007-01-31 23:02.
When I read that I thought it was one of the Strangelove faction from Vegas. I always thought they were a great invention, because a GM will want to play them silly, like the movie, but the subject matter is deadly serious, and it would certainly come up, the fact that its serious, at the scariest moment possible.
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HDF
Submitted by Gentleman John on Thu, 2007-02-01 03:14.
I like HDF because it tends to have an unhappy ending, and this piece provides an alternate, equally valid, view of life from the survivors' pov.
Besides: let me describe one of my favourite cartoons. Picture a line of nine Roma legionaries holding bloody swords. At the the end of the line is the mutilated corpse of another legionary. Thr caption: "This decimation isn't as bad as people make it out, you know."
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How valid...
Submitted by Chainsaw Aardvark on Thu, 2007-02-01 03:42.
Maybe I'm just not firing on all cylinders due to the hour of the day, but what is HDF? MAD, KGB, CIA, CVN, TANSTAAFL, and CRT are making sense at the moment, but not HDF.
Humorous or not, I wonder if this guy has a point. Portraying a fictitious character in a made up world, could there be justification of this? Its not so much the bomb that scares me, as the alien's retaliation. They still have ships, and we still have a mars colony. No zombies, but probably not a fun place to be at the moment.
Nuclear power is OK with me, but I don't trust the people running it, nor the idea that we can program an adequate AI to run a reactor - which does leave a bit of a hanging question.
There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.
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Sorry ...
Submitted by Gentleman John on Thu, 2007-02-01 12:22.
HDF is a common abbreviation for Horror/Dark Fiction - a genre of fiction that does not have happy endings. I suppose it is the modern version of Lovecraft's existentialist horror, although it has to be said that I first encounterted HDF in the White Wolf Borderlands anthologies.
A lot of "new wave" horror games are HDF in nature - particualrly survival horror games - but I don't think the WoD really qualifies.
And don't worry about nuclear power. We don't let AIs run it. Hell, we don't even let computers run it. It's still down to good, old-fashioned magnetic logic to initiate safety functions. The human element does not get much of a look in. To illustrate, there is a paragraph in a safety procedure about what to do in the event of a coolant leak from a reactor that goes something along the lines of "Beyond this point in the procedure you may not rely upon the actions of charge floor attendants."
We even have HDF in technicl manuals.
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Kubrick Comentary
OK, it might be a little tacky to respond to my own post, but I was rather torn on either ending it on the low note as above, or having an epilogue of sorts with one of these comments:
Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks. General Turgidson
Turgidson: ...if the pilot's good, see, I mean, if he's really..sharp, he can barrel that baby in so low [he spreads his arms like wings and laughs], you oughtta see it sometime, it's a sight. A big plane like a '52. VRROOM! There's jet exhaust, fryin' chickens in the barnyard.
Muffley: Yeah, but has he got a chance?
Turgidson: Has he got a chance? Hell, Ye...ye... [He covers his mouth dumbstruck, suddenly and solemnly grasping the implications of his words]
both quotes, of course, are from the movie "Dr Strangelove"
There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.