When Nukes Fall, Shadowrun in a post-apocalypse setting Options

[Casper]

Ok the proof. The nuke launched by the Vatacun in Black Madonna never went off. The one in chicago did not work as planned or to the best of my knowledge did not go off. But there is one more but I cant remember the where and when.

[Tanka]

[Ecclesiastes]

I think the point is that nukes need to have very strong wards and enchantments to make them go off. Mmmm.... Winternight...

[Casper]

Nope unfortunatly Bug City was one of the books when I was playing 2nd ed that never got around to picking up. As for the bug spirit thing I feel its something that 3rd ed should just move away from. I never really liked the way it was dealt with in UB, not saying that it was not a good book or idea its just that I really didnt care for it.

[Tanka]

Uh. I was referencing the fact that the Cermak Blast was a huge friggin' nuke contained by magical forces!

I mean, we only just talked about it on the previous page.

[Ecclesiastes]

<smacks tanka on the nose with a rolled up newspaper>

Down boy! No need to get uppity.

[Tanka]

Feh. I just get a slight bit peeved by people who don't read posts between their own posts. Seems kind of silly, as most of the time their questions are answered then.

[GenoSicK]

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

So, why does fusion work? Why does any fission work?

Why?

If nukes don't go off, why is it that the base particle activity which creates all the fun effects of a nuke work just fine?

[mfb]

it's magic. ooooOOOOOooooo.

[Kagetenshi]

It works, but not well. See all the meltdowns that happened around the Awakening.

~J

[Nylan]

so with the whole 'nukes not working' thing, my first GM many winters ago told me that the dragons caused it somehow... I took his word as the gospel truth, but now after reading a little bit have seen nothing to support it. But at the time, he said that somehow harmful nuclear reaction (ie bombs) would no longer work on account of some magic. I think his explanation for the Cermack bomb working was that it was shielded from the nullifying magic by all the wards and things in place where it was detonated.... It sounded all right to me, but again: it was probably just my GMs BS.

[Kagetenshi]

I doubt it, but it's possible. Who got the production notes for Bug City?

~J

[cykotek]

In the interests of returning this thread to the original topic, I will point to the Atomic/Magic page, courtesy of the excellent Ancient History. That is where we discover that there are lots of meltdowns, Isreal nukes the hell out of Libya, the Lone Eagle missile doesn't go off, Cermak does, and Shiawase patents cold fusion. In all, fission, at least, no longer works as we once thought it did, leaving the door open for a nuclear apocalypse, especially if the corps go to war and launch along with everyone else.

That's actually an interesting scenario. Have the megacorps start it, possibly leading to a "evil, nuclear-overlord corporations vs everyone else" situation.

[Kanada Ten]

Fission does work (they built a fission plant on top of Glow City's old one), but there was a "reaction" to the Awakening. There was no mention of a second reaction during the Comet. We also know the Saeder-Krupp and Ares have stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and they wouldn't if they didn't work.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Israel also nuked Libya 8 years before the Awakening...

Kanada makes the most cogent point yet: Why would megas and nations keep nukes if they were useless?

[Kanada Ten]

More to the subject at hand, it's possible that nuclear blasts could open astral rifts similar to those created by the Aurora Borealis. Where these rifts lead would be anyone guess. We also know that Toxic and/or Mutated Salamanders (Spirits of the Flames) spontaneously manifest around Trinity and other nuclear weapons test sites. And we know that a cult called the Atomic Kiva has a leader that claims to follow the totem of Atom.

Depending on the extent of destruction and the timeline, I see an end to society as it has ever been know. The people* that remain will have armies of robots under their control which they use to squander the remaining resources of Earth in order to build their space fleets. Most of the megacorporations will have drifting colonies, like giant hives exploiting the asteroid belt. Mars and Europa will be the new battlefields in search water, clean water. Magic will be unstable everywhere, but usable (just dangerously so). Parasites.

* Their minds supplemented by AI and merged into vast machines, these mechlords control their armies directly; riggers who's thoughts bring down storms of fire. Once the nukes have been used there's no reason not to keep using them, micobombs the size of cigarette that can level what we might call a city, but to them is only an oil rig.

The humanists will use genetic manipulation to create half breeds immune to radiation. They battle the mechlords using the twisted magic and cobbled technologies. Existence is all that matters, they feed on the leftovers that the machines consider unprofitable to harvest. Toxics.

This post has been edited by Kanada Ten: Sep 17 2004, 06:28 AM

[Omer Joel]

Who says that a post-apocalyptic setting has to be caused by nukes? Sure, nukes are the most classical of causes, but there are bioweapons (work VERY WELL in Shadowrun), astroids, socio-economic breakdowns, mass-scale conventional wars, and, ofcourse, the magical causes - Winternight, Horrors, Bugs and others.

[Siege]

Crimson - because those things are too much fun to keep around, just in case they do work. A single nuke represents a lot of time, money and effort to just toss out.

Joel - I don't think you can count Winternight as a strictly magical threat since they are trying to bring about a nuclear winter with...well...nukes.

-Siege

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Whatever

[Cable]

[FrostyNSO]

I don't know if anyone realizes this, but Nukes require constant maintainence and are very expensive to just "keep around".

Why would countries and corporations have them around when it would be less expensive to dismantle them? Unless of course they're just sitting around gathering dust, then that'd be a good reason why they're not detonating properly.

[Siege]

And if they ever start working again, it would be even more expensive to rebuild and re-arm.

Nukes have been the "ultimate weapons" for a long time before the Awakening. Most people in a position to use a nuke are probably highly reluctant to give up what used to be the biggest stick on the block.

-Siege

[Nylan]

What do you mean by 'constant maintenance'? As far as I know, all you have to do is replace the deuterium every few years, and all that does is increase the explosive power, not create it.

Plus, inside missiles and shielded silos, the radiation is contained...something it wouldn't be if they dismantled them, and then they'd have to put all that Plutonium 239 somewhere... it just doesn't disappear when you dismantle the bombs.

[Kagetenshi]

Keep in mind that I think that nukes still work, if not as predictably as they once did, but:

If you were a mega, and you had nukes, and they stopped working, and you got rid of them, would you let that be known?

~J