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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Pharmaceuticals in the corporate water supply?

Posted by: Pyritefoolsgold Feb 26 2007, 10:46 PM

I was thinking about the controversy going on right now about water supply tampering, and it made me think that shadowrun corporations would definitely deliver psychoactive pharmaceuticals through their water. This would leave their employees calm and undisturbed by emotional issues, or at least that's what the bigwigs tell themselves, when really it disconnects them even further from life, often leading to suicides. Imagine the runners break into an office, and tell everyone to get down, threatening to shoot, and they all obey orders as calmly as if it were a fire drill. Then one of them purposely forces the runners to shoot him because he "wanted to know what it would feel like"

Posted by: Jaid Feb 26 2007, 11:04 PM

i would expect some simsense-reinforcement to any drug-based treatments myself.

quite possibly a milder form of psychotropic IC.

Posted by: Demerzel Feb 26 2007, 11:09 PM

QUOTE (Jaid)

quite possibly a milder form of psychotropic IC.

Wouldn’t that require that the corp employees use hot sim VR? I guess we won’t know until unwired comes out with a psychotropic attack program…

Posted by: TheOOB Feb 26 2007, 11:52 PM

Between the plagues and diseases, and all the magical strangeness flying around, I'd imagine that water lines are extreamly well protected agienst being tainted like that. Besides, if any info about something like that came up it would be a huge PR blow, even for a Mega.

Posted by: FrankTrollman Feb 27 2007, 12:00 AM

QUOTE (TheOOB)

You're thinking small scale. The megas would tell you that they were tampering with your water supply. Up front and everything. They'd say that they were putting in special additives that made you more resilient to infection, more healthy, more alive.

And then they'd slip a little Methylphenidate into the water supply - just enough to make people slightly more focused and awake, and just enough to get people to be slightly dependent upon the water supply of the arcology.

Secret tampering is for people who don't own the local news outlet.

-Frank

Posted by: Jaid Feb 27 2007, 01:40 AM

QUOTE (FrankTrollman)

QUOTE (TheOOB @ Feb 26 2007, 06:52 PM)

and then if someone analyses the water, you blame it on runners sent by some other mega (complete with video evidence), and put it back to normal for a while until no one is looking again.

QUOTE (Demerzel)

Wouldn’t that require that the corp employees use hot sim VR? I guess we won’t know until unwired comes out with a psychotropic attack program…

well, first off i suspect that more people have and use hotsim than most people assume. BTLs are highly addictive, fairly widespread, and unlike physical drugs do not require you to actually go someplace dangerous in the meat to obtain the drug. furthermore, a hotsim module is most likely not recognisable as a hotsim module until it has been opened up or otherwise analysed. i mean, let's face it, BTL sex alone is gonna bring in a lot of customers. so long as the employee doesn't let it interfere with work too much, they won't care. if it becomes a problem, fire them. there's a hundred people who would gladly take the job for every one you fire.

and, of course, there's always the possibility that there's a milder form, as i said, possible with normal simsense. if nothing else, you could to some extent condition the employees by giving them simsense loyalty, job satisfaction, etc. even if not psychotropic, that doesn't mean you can't condition them with it.

Posted by: RunnerPaul Feb 27 2007, 02:14 AM

Positive Conditioning doesn't have to be at BTL levels to have an effect on the psyche. It just takes longer to work, like an 8 hour workday, for instance.

Posted by: imperialus Feb 27 2007, 04:53 AM

When you figure that almost everyone with a real job in 2070 probably spends 8 or 9 hours a day plugged into an AR/VR interface at work, then you head home and spend another 3 or 4 hours at least pumping more artifical reality into their brains. Just imagine how much potential there would be for old fasioned run of the mill subliminal messaging. Remember this stuff is being pumped directly into your brain, that's a lot more powerful than seeing BUY COKE flashed onto your screen too fast to see.