Diseases as character gear, What is the cost? Options

[Voran]

You can also stick a nanohive in their pet Smoochems containing Carcerand-plus Intruder nanites, so when Smoochems cuddles up with the target, their infection is maintained.

Expensive, though potentially elegant way of killing someone. The payoff would have to be pretty good to balance out the costs. Tho some might be recouped if you planned on retrieving the assassin pet.

[Ascalaphus]

Expensive, though potentially elegant way of killing someone. The payoff would have to be pretty good to balance out the costs. Tho some might be recouped if you planned on retrieving the assassin pet.

It's more of a "if you do me, I'll do you worse" thing. The player is one of my best friends, but his characters are all very unpleasant people, and it's fun to think of ways to get "insurance".

[Manunancy]

The morals I consider to be the larger impediment. All you need to avoid the diseases you are spreading is a full chemical seal, which is easy to come by.

As far as testing in the wild, that's pretty much what the Azzies did to the Yucatan and no Thor Shot popped up.

Control is something you can't get in epidemiology. Your subjects are populations, and the only way to observe them is in the wild.

Full chemical seal might be effective, but it's also very obvious - it doesn"t take a genius to figure out that if somone is wandering around in a 'martian suit' there's something fishy going on. And might not be exactly gentle when asking for explanations.

The azzies have played with chemical weapons and biowarfare agents in Yucatan without getting nuked from orbit, but if I remember right, they had to pull out and and do some serious groveling to keep the Corporate Court from issuing an Omega Order against Aztechnology. Which means 'unaligned agents' will get stomped on hard and fast unless some heavy hitter uses a lot of clout to delay retribution.

And there's a lot that can be lab-tested - mortality rate, contagion rate, how long does the agent remain infectious once it has left the body, that sort of things. Which can let you get a decent model of how the disease will act once released. You can't be completely sure the models will be airtight, but you can usually have a fairly good guess. But doing that will cost a bundle and a lot of ressources, up to and including live test subjects

Biolgical warfare is amongst the reddest flags to wave under the power-that-be's nose, which means playing with that tends to bring a whole lot of grief to bear. And I fail to see anything it could bring to a party of shadowrunners to make up for that. Diseases are basically useless for the sort of jobs that are the shadows's bread and butter.

[AStarshipforAnts]

I'm far from an expert on this subject, but here's my two (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

It isn't that hard to mutate common diseases into something far more sinister. Hell, my freshman year bio lab had us doing three generations of just that. It's also dead easy to do, as long as you know proper lab protocol. Here's all you need for that kind of pet project:

- Petri dishes
- Nutrient agar
- Inoculation loops
- Pipets and tips
- Bunsen burner for sterilization
- Gloves
- Sharpie marker and tape for labeling
- A warm incubator to culture your new unicellular monsters
- Beginning samples: Other people, stair railings, doorknobs, etc.

And aside from the incubator, these are not expensive items.

Edit: And the internet tells me that you can get a used incubator from another lab for like...$500. This is something a very persistent kid could put together on minimum wage in his mother's basement.

[Simon Kerimov]

I'm far from an expert on this subject, but here's my two (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

It isn't that hard to mutate common diseases into something far more sinister. Hell, my freshman year bio lab had us doing three generations of just that. It's also dead easy to do, as long as you know proper lab protocol. Here's all you need for that kind of pet project:

- Petri dishes
- Nutrient agar
- Inoculation loops
- Pipets and tips
- Bunsen burner for sterilization
- Gloves
- Sharpie marker and tape for labeling
- A warm incubator to culture your new unicellular monsters
- Beginning samples: Other people, stair railings, doorknobs, etc.

And aside from the incubator, these are not expensive items.

Edit: And the internet tells me that you can get a used incubator from another lab for like...$500. This is something a very persistent kid could put together on minimum wage in his mother's basement.

The lab equipment isn't the expensive part, it's true. But starting out from botulism and working toward something that counts as a biowarfare agent takes time. And oddly enough, the basic materials to make stuff like that, as per the Chemistry rules, may only cost 10% of what the agent would, but the Availability of materials is the same.

The conclusion I'm at is that if a player wants a biolab to give people Athlete's Foot, they are golden. If they want an agent with a name composed of numbers and a handful of random letters, they are out of luck. Clever players can still do quite a bit of nasty with Athlete's Foot, but it's still not Combatulism Strain-5.

[Method]

That list is great if you want to culture some normal skin flora or (if you're lucky) a Strep pyogenes, but if you think the stair railings and doorknobs around you are colonized with agents suitable for biological warfare, Id suggest you find safer places to hang out.

There is a helluvalot more equipment involved in developing a bioweapon and most of it is very expensive. A decent thermocycler, for instance, will cost you a couple grand. Never mind the safety features such a lab would need, like a highly-rated laminar flow fume hood. Back when I was doing research we bought a new one for our lab that cost like 20K or something ridiculous. If you really want to get specific, do some research into the operating costs of a biosafty level 3 or 4 facility. Wikipedia has a list of such facilities and you will note that none of them is in some dude's garage.

The point I'm trying to make is that contrary to conspiracy theories developing a biological warfare agent isn't something you can do casually with minimal resources. Its really beyond the scope of most SR games, and certainly isn't something a starting character should be doing. Just my 2 cents...

edit: or what Simon said. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[AStarshipforAnts]

I did mention in my post that the list I compiled was only for the basics.

[Manunancy]

That list is great if you want to culture some normal skin flora or (if you're lucky) a Strep pyogenes, but if you think the stair railings and doorknobs around you are colonized with agents suitable for biological warfare, Id suggest you find safer places to hang out.

There is a helluvalot more equipment involved in developing a bioweapon and most of it is very expensive. A decent thermocycler, for instance, will cost you a couple grand. Never mind the safety features such a lab would need, like a highly-rated laminar flow fume hood. Back when I was doing research we bought a new one for our lab that cost like 20K or something ridiculous. If you really want to get specific, do some research into the operating costs of a biosafty level 3 or 4 facility. Wikipedia has a list of such facilities and you will note that none of them is in some dude's garage.

The point I'm trying to make is that contrary to conspiracy theories developing a biological warfare agent isn't something you can do casually with minimal resources. Its really beyond the scope of most SR games, and certainly isn't something a starting character should be doing. Just my 2 cents...

edit: or what Simon said. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

You don't need much to attempt it - though it's extremely likely you will either end up dead from the disease you were playing with or contaminate your samples beyond utility before you're haflway done. The best outcome from that sort of kitchen lab is in my opinion a premature release of an unfinished bug - which sort of defeats the point if you're aiming for blackmail 'fork the cash our I'll release the disease... hu what do you mean my test subjects have have already spread it out ?'. Even if you're aiming at genocide, there are decent odds that survivors of the half-finished design will get at least partial immunity from the finished product. Once again defeating the point.

Basically, it's the sort of thing you attempt only if you're merely willing to raise as much hell as possible and don't care about surviving the experience. Or are too dumb to figure the danger out, but in that case odds are you'll be too dumb to do the job.

[Simon Kerimov]

You don't need much to attempt it - though it's extremely likely you will either end up dead from the dieseas ou were playing with or contamiante your samples beyond utility before you're haflway done. The best outcome from that sort of kitchen lab is in my opinion a premature release of an unfinished bug - which sort of defeats the point if you're aiming for blackmail 'fork the cash our I'll release the disease... hu what do you mean my test subjects have have already spread it out ?'. Even if you're aiming at genocide, there are decent odds that survivors of the half-finished design will get at least partial immunity from th finhsed product. Once again defeating the point.

Basically, it's the ort of thing yo uattempt only if you're merely willing to raise as much hell as possible and don't care about surviving the experience. Or are too dumb to figure the danger out, but in that case odds are you'll be too dumb to do the job.

The other thing to keep in mind is how hard it is to design a disease as a weapon even when you have full capability and supply. Ebola, for example, makes a crappy bioweapon, since it burns through a population too quickly. The flu makes a crappy bioweapon, because it mutates too quickly. Diseases, plain and simple, are terrible weapons for a military, terrorists, or mad scientists. They are unpredictable, poorly targetable, expensive to produce, and damn near impossible to hide the development of. The only diseases in Shadowrun worth considering are the magical diseases like MADS and HMHVV.