As I don't have the appropriate source book I ask my fellow gamers for aid. Here is the situation. Game time is 2058 in the month of September. Has Strain III been released yet? Also can any one tell me if any attempt was made to clear out any of the great museums in Chicago before UCAS declared it a containment area? I am assuming no but could be wrong. Obviously if my conjectures hold true then this makes for some possible Shadowruns to locations like the Field Museum or the Museum of History and Art. I am thinking the display areas and the immediate basement storage areas would have been looted or vandalized but the sub-basement vaults may still have items of worth hidden away. A friend of mine who used to work in the Field museum once told me that it only had 10% of its collection ever on display at any one time. She also said that their were crates sitting in the lower floors that had not been opened sense they were delivered back in the 30's and 40's. Any suggestions or ideas would be helpful.
Thanks

Target UCAS indicates that Ares' "operation extermination" (including Strain III) started 22 February 2058 and the Containment Zone was abolished by the end of the month. You can, of course, make this happen in your campaign earlier, later, or not at all.

Many of the great museums lost their most valuable items years before the arrival of the bugs. (From The Neo-Anarchist's Guide to North America.) Starting in 2029, insurance companies refused to insure art in Chicago museums. The Chicago corporations picked up the art, convincing the owners that it was better to keep the art in Chicago, even if it was no longer public property, than to transfer it to another city. Valuable art pieces became scattered throughout the city in major corporation buildings. The few people in these buildings who had the resources to get out the day the containment zone went up were generally not inclined to worry about art.

While the most valuable pieces became scattered, museums still retained vast holdings when the bugs came. Most smaller museums had their public displays looted, but the Field Museum was secured by Jason Two-Spirits and operated as the third-largest haven for humans within the zone. He protected the museum contents, and in fact his followers worked around the clock to discover what items within the thousands of artifacts and foci had properties useful in fighting the bugs.

Hmmm, interesting. Field museum may not be the best target then. How ever that still leaves the Art and History Museum and the observatory down on the lake front. Last time I checked they had lots of moon rocks there. There is also a museum that deals with what has become known as the middle east. Can't remember the name of the museum though. I find it funny though that the UCAS releases Strain III and then within a month drops the quarantine of the city. Not a lot of time allowed for verification that the city is bug free.

Where in the timeline did Ares drop the nuke, as an opening Salvo or as the final blow?

More like 6 days from start to end. Yes, some people think there might be some bugs left.

The Nuke was what started it all.

They only waited six days? Does any one else see problems with this? Not questioning the information you understand. I am questioning the person who wrote this particular part of Shadowrun canon.

Burning Bright being one of my favorite books, I can answer regarding the decision to use the nuke.

Basically, the KE firewatch teams attacked an ex-UB warehouse and placed shaped on the floor to open the way down into the hive so they could cleanse the depths. Unfortunately, they disturbed the main North-american hive, and hundreds upon hundreds of bugs poured out. Roger Soaring-Owl, CEO of Knight Errant, who was physically there, immediately attempted to deploy the small tactical nuke, however the vehicle it was to be deployed from was interfered with in some way, presumably just knocked over, and then the command van was rent apart and the story skips ahead roughly a week. The hero of the story meets up with what is left of knight errant, and they receive a burst transmission from Soaring-Owl, who managed to escape the CZ, authorizing them to use Damocles (the Code-name for the nuke) against the hive wherever they found it reconstituted.

The bug hive was setting up in the power plant at Cermak and Racine. They were just about to release a new hatching of bugs that would presumably be enough to overrun the entire CZ, and from that point, possibly overpower the forces stationed outside. To complicate matters, they were raising a massively powerful magical barrier to protect themselves from assault. To shorten the story, they flew the nuke in, and it detonated just after the barrier went up, wiping out the primary bug hive. The blast itself was contained by the barrier, as was the radiation. The nuke itself was extremely small, somewhere around half a kiloton to 2 kilotons.

*edit*

Oh yeah, Ares did this without the permission or knowledge of the UCAS government. Dunno if it was ever made known who was responsible for it, the original bug city book implied not.

So how soon after the nuke was used did they deploy Strain III?

several years. bug city happened in 2053 iirc, and thats when they nuked it. Strain 3 was like 2058 wasnt it?

According to the timeline (Bug City p. 128):

A huge hive busts out Aug 22, 2055.
The containment zone starts Aug 23, initially with UCAS military and National Guards who fire upon citizens. Bulldozing starts to create the wall.
Supply drops start Aug 26.
The nuclear blast was (will be?) Oct 1.
The wall is completed Oct 4.
The general public on the outside still believes it is a Vitas plague.

Note also, that the Field Museum was completely devoid of all life when the wall came down. No located survivors and missing all magical items. This has never been explained to my knowledge.

I thought the field Museum had been made into a refuge by the humans? Did I misunderstand this or did the inhabitants vanish?

They vanished "right" before Ares Firewatch clears out the Containment Zone.

That could be a very interesting hook for later adventures. The players raid the museum only to see signs of long term occupation but no people. More inportantly no artifacts which means a very unhappy Mr. Johnson.

Anyone ever work with the idea of Soaring Owl having been posessed?

Does any one have access to a map of Chicago around the end of the quarintine period? Just prior to the lifting of it or right after?

If I remember right the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry has a Spitfire and a German U-Boat on display. Something to keep in mind if you have any Riggers.

Weirdly enough I just got back from a trip to Chicago and while I was there I picked up a bunch of Road Maps and brouchures from various landmarks becuase my GM was planning on running a game there as well.

The U-Boat has a big door cut in its side though:(. I guess a rigger could patch it but would you wanna trust your life to it? Lol.

I'd recommend finding a copy of Target: UCAS. It takes place -right- after Dunk's assassination and Haffener being sworn in, and details what it was like in the CZ when Ares swept in and unleashed FAB on the city. From what I understand, FAB-III turned out to be -much- worse for Chicago than the nuke, at least in terms of astral. After the FAB incident, Ares pulled all of its resources out, and declared Chicago "purged"... And a mess for the UCAS gov't to clean up. I think glimpses of what it is like there now are given in Target: Matrix (or the core Matrix book, not sure which has the hinkfo on the NooseNet), a bit in Shadows of North America, and of course, various sources here and there that deal in that region.

Athenor

Have that on my to pick up list along with Bug City. Considering how much is below ground in Chicago one has to wonder just how many insect spirits survived Strain III. One would also wonder what may have been woken up by all the deaths and the warping of the astral plains in the area.

Additional question: Does any one know if the locations for the big eights facilities in Chicago are indicated any were?

Do you mean the megacorp Chicago locations? Hum, I know NAGtNA made refrence to Fuchi. I don't know how many of the Big Eight were in Chicago. I think UCAS Steel and the Truman towers are mentioned in said book. Ares has "the Dome" in Bug City, its on a map.

Does "Bug" City have a map of Chicago as it appears at that time? That would make life simpler. All I have to do then is find a copy of bug city, lol.

Bug City has tons of really tiny maps. It has one full pager, IIRC for the whole CZ, and then little area maps for each "sanctuary".

Chicago has alot of tunnels underneith it. Tunnels on top of tunnels and on top of tunnels. A labrienth if you will. Remember the Chicago flood? Caused by a 3 foot hole made by a piling being installed in the river. Oops.

Keep that in mind.

There is a reasonably large map of the CZ only, with all sorts of little color coded chunks to represent areas of influence of the various factions inside the wall. As Kanada mentioned, it's got a lot of small maps imbedded in the various sections, too. THe full size map is a two-page pull-out deal.

As for the corporations, Ares, Aztechnology, Federated-Boeing, Fuchi, Mitsuhama, and Yamatetsu are all located in what's known as the Core, on the southern edge of the CZ. The Core is the main corporate district of Chicago, circa 2055, and is divided in half by the wall.

For reference, the CZ runs from Harlem Ave east to the lake shore (I want to say the water-fence of the CZ is ~1km out, but don't quote me), and runs from Irving Park Road south to 115th St (just run a line along 115th from Harlem Ave to the lake shore for the southern boundry). The Core runs from about 103rd st to 127th st, and from halsted to about 2 blocks past western.

As for ways to get out early, consider the Fed-Boeing flightline inside the CZ. Everything from commuter production models to military prototypes were on property, and most were stolen within a short time of the Wall going up. Until the UCAS military got their SAM sites online, that is. By canon, there are rumors of a still-locked hanger still containing vehicles to launch with. It's interesting to note, that every scuba rig in the city disappeared real fast, too.

The "Ares Dome" is actually the Wrigley Dome. The remnants of the FireWatch team responsible for the nuke detonation took control of it, and forged a strong refuge against the bugs there.

In addition the Wrigley Dome, the CZ also contains such notables as Soldier field, the University of Chicago campus, Midway airport, and all of the elevated train loop. Midway was cratered very early, so bring a VTOL. O'Hare is still running, though mostly as a military depot.

The color coded map in Bug City has too many colors that look the same. It's hard to tell orange from orange from orange. After I put post-it notes on it, it became a very useful tool for me, and after the players had moved around the zone some we started identifying which places they knew.

I tried going online (maps.yahoo.com or mapquest or mapblast) and printing out sections of the Containment Zone and taping them together, but that wasn't very satisfactory. The maps either showed too little detail, or not enough. This might work to print a map of the streets around just a few important spots, such as the Dome, the Sanctum, or Little Earth.

What the players used the most was a Chicago city street map. If I were to run it again, I'd just buy a new map, use a big black marker to mark the containment zone wall, and let the players tape onto it a note for each place or group of people they might want to come back to. (Or places they might want to avoid -- like the place where it looked like bodies had died of radiation poisoning.)

We did some major activities at the old Cabrini Green public housing project. For that I went to terraserver-usa.com and printed out satellite photos of the project. For example, here is a satellite photo of Soldier Field, the Field Museum, and Meigs airfield.

Ourteam,
I was thinking of dong just that. I figured with a common street map I could mark the containment wall and the blast site and other important locations. Just need Bug City to indicate were said locations are. Question, ground zero for the nuke was were exactly? Was it within the CZ or outside? Some one mentioned Racine as the location but thats in Wisconsin for smeg sake.

the blast is mentioned in the two places I can quickly find as either near Cermak and Racine, or Cermak and Halsted (both north of meigs, I believe).

IIRC, it was at the secondary waste treatment facility for the Chicago area. I seem to recall that the one time I saw an actual address listed, it was for 1100 W. Cermak Road. The same address as where the contemporary FASA offices were.

I may be off then. I am thinking of Racine the town not the road. In either case I am assuming that the blast site was within the CZ, right?

Yes, very much so.