Greets,
I was recently reading up on the Tir so I did a quick look at what kinds of U.S. military bases can be found in the region - not many except for a small one called Umatilla Ordnance Depot (later changed to Umatilla Chemical Depot). A quick look through various sources confirmed that in the 1980s-1990s it was holding 12% of the chemical stocks of the U.S. military. Most of it was long term storage of the usual suspects of Sarin, Tabun, and VX in munitions (such as rockets, mines, and aerial bombs). In 2009, they are currently destroying all stocks of it including VX mines.
With the balkanization of the United States and the formation of various tin-pot dictatorship, I mean nation states in transition. What happened to all these munitions and supplies?
How many of these kinds of devices are still floating about?
What about the other two of the unholy trinity, nuclear and biological?
Full Version: Balkanization and military stores
QUOTE
What happened to all these munitions and supplies?
Not much... until Runner's Companion gave us the Restricted Gear Quality.
Remember the awakening was pretty violent. The Eurowars and the NAN rebellion probably burned up a lot of those weapons in the west.
AZT used a lot in the Yutican.
I think Israel nuked someone, Lybia if I remmeber right, that implies more war that probably used up the middle east's stocks.
I'm guessing the chinese stocks were pretty well split by war lords the way much of the survivng military was split between the UCAS and CAS.
India seems to be holding togther culturally.
Africa could be a wild card but how many of those states can afford WMD's?
AZT used a lot in the Yutican.
I think Israel nuked someone, Lybia if I remmeber right, that implies more war that probably used up the middle east's stocks.
I'm guessing the chinese stocks were pretty well split by war lords the way much of the survivng military was split between the UCAS and CAS.
India seems to be holding togther culturally.
Africa could be a wild card but how many of those states can afford WMD's?
QUOTE (Snow_Fox @ May 17 2009, 06:09 PM) 
Africa could be a wild card but how many of those states can afford WMD's?
Probably more than we want to know. Oh what am I saying, it just means more work and cash.
QUOTE (Snow_Fox @ May 17 2009, 10:09 AM)
Remember the awakening was pretty violent. The Eurowars and the NAN rebellion probably burned up a lot of those weapons in the west.
AZT used a lot in the Yutican.
I think Israel nuked someone, Lybia if I remmeber right, that implies more war that probably used up the middle east's stocks.
I'm guessing the chinese stocks were pretty well split by war lords the way much of the survivng military was split between the UCAS and CAS.
India seems to be holding togther culturally.
Africa could be a wild card but how many of those states can afford WMD's?
AZT used a lot in the Yutican.
I think Israel nuked someone, Lybia if I remmeber right, that implies more war that probably used up the middle east's stocks.
I'm guessing the chinese stocks were pretty well split by war lords the way much of the survivng military was split between the UCAS and CAS.
India seems to be holding togther culturally.
Africa could be a wild card but how many of those states can afford WMD's?
the glass desert formerly known as the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, became that way after a retaliatory nuclear strike by Israel, in response to Chemical terrorism.
I was under the impression that nukes really don't work as they should post-awakening. Winterknight proved us wrong.
What about biological and chemical stores?
Nothing quite like 10kg of VX, being aerosolised with a bit of NAN know how and a crop duster to make the Seattle acid rain seem quaint. Or fire off rockets from the Z-zones into the city centre.
I take it that despite the proliferation of all these weapons and knowledge, and cult of a month on the street no-one outside of Winternight has actually done anything with WMDs?
Nothing quite like 10kg of VX, being aerosolised with a bit of NAN know how and a crop duster to make the Seattle acid rain seem quaint. Or fire off rockets from the Z-zones into the city centre.
I take it that despite the proliferation of all these weapons and knowledge, and cult of a month on the street no-one outside of Winternight has actually done anything with WMDs?
They have been actively destroying the stockpiles in giant very secure incinerators. They are done with many of the munitions and have about 37% of the total agents destroyed. I think they are done with all or almost all the VX and GB and are about to start on the mustard gas munitions.
Nukes have been used by various governements and megacorporations over the years, but the only rogue organisation to use them were indeed Winternight. To be fair, though, they didn't use one. They used like what, two dozen?
Chemical weapons seem to be a bit out of fashion, yes. During the Tsimshian/NAN war, some were used. They don't actually get used much, but developement of them is still a thriving industry. Universal Omnitech engineered a new strain of weaponized ebola. Africa is a hotbed of research into the subject (or is that a hotbed of subjects for the research?). I think people in general are a little calmer about chemical weapons since VITAS.
Chemical weapons seem to be a bit out of fashion, yes. During the Tsimshian/NAN war, some were used. They don't actually get used much, but developement of them is still a thriving industry. Universal Omnitech engineered a new strain of weaponized ebola. Africa is a hotbed of research into the subject (or is that a hotbed of subjects for the research?). I think people in general are a little calmer about chemical weapons since VITAS.
you know, Chrysalis, I get worried when you ask questions like this.
IIRC don't the corps and Corporate Court in particular kind of frown on WMDs, at least the fairly unstable ones? It's things like these that are liable to get seriously out of hand, destabilise things and damage the market place for their goods - either by taking out the civilians that buy their stuff or the militaries that die too quickly so they can't sell them weapons or support services over a protracted conflict. Working with national governments and international law enforcement I could see them investing some time and money hoovering up any loose WMDs and discouraging various tin-pot dictatorships from trying to obtain them.
true, like Quantum in the last James bond movie- if you don't ball ball with us, we'll feed you yours.
still when the AAA's want to they do, like what happened in the Yucatan. Interestingly the Japanese didn't in CFS.
still when the AAA's want to they do, like what happened in the Yucatan. Interestingly the Japanese didn't in CFS.
Ok this is a great thread from a historical perspective, and in some fashion might make for a very cool …quot; and very scary …quot; run for somebody. But there are some issues to take into account:
First of all, with all forms of so-called “Weapons of Mass Destruction�, as General Curtis Lemay or Iosef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev could have told you, the biggest issue is successfully delivering the weapon to your target. The challenges inherent are unique to each form of weapon.
Second of all, many non-nuclear weapons have a distinctly limited effective period after deployment: IIRC, VX breaks down in exposure to sunlight as do many weaponized bacteriological and viralogical weapons.
When looking at the biological weapons which might have been in storage prior to the break-up of the United States, they were largely weaponized versions of diseases that had plagued mankind for centuries. By 2070, simple off-the-shelf anti-biotic and anti-viral drugs probably have the ability to counter any or all of those weapons well within the incubation period. Also, many of those weapons can decay in storage, especially in poorly maintained storage, like a lost or forgotten warehouse. The difficulty of distribution of these agents varies largely by vector, but suffice it to say, wide spread distribution is not a simple matter. The easily spread inhalants are partly counteracted by the ubiquitous “nose plugs� or “filter masks� many denizens of the city wear when forced to go out on a dry day, and will have trouble propagating in rainy conditions. Furthermore, most urbanites inhabit dwellings that have very advanced particle filtration systems. Those that don’t, as a rule, aren’t worth going after because they don’t make a big enough impact, politically. Add to this the state of biological and genetic engineering, and the horrors that could come out of a modern lab would make the ugliest weapons of the late 20th century look like a common cold. So taken as a whole, stockpiles of the old weapons would not be a dire threat relatively speaking in 2070.
Chemical weapons are another matter, since their onset is very fast. But the only advantage to a “stockpile� of such weapons is the time required to mix up a given batch in wartime is prohibitive. The state of the chemical sciences in 2070 are such that mixing up small batches of old-style chemical agents for terror or low-level warfare is relatively simple. A declassified source I saw once listed one half of VX (a binary nerve agent) as isopropyl alcohol! So the old agents in storage are both weaker and less stable than what modern chemistry can provide. Distribution is also a problem, either because you need to distribute an aerosol directly or a gas which is highly subject to wind and precipitation. Now, emptying a gas into the enclosed system of a high-rise HVAC system would be nasty to be sure, but this isn’t really any more a WMD at that point than enough plastic explosive to drop the same building with all the occupants at their desks or in their beds. And if you don’t think the Corps or Lone Star have something ready to shoot down a “crop duster� that decides to start buzzing a ‘plex, think again.
As always, the most dangerous and persistent WMD is the nuclear warhead, be it fission, fusion or dirty. (The dirty bomb is subject to wind and precipitation, but it's effects are very persistent and difficult to remediate). The materials used to make the device are hazardous for extremely long periods of time. If sufficiently advanced, the weapon can be made extremely compact and very powerful. The W-80 warhead utilized by the US Military had a nominal yield around 100 thousand tons of TNT, or between 5.5 and 8.5 times as powerful as the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, but is less than 20�/51cm in diameter, less than a 68�/150cm long and reportedly weighs in less than 500 pounds/225kg. A package like that is easy to load into the bed of a pickup truck or a medium sized private aircraft - or even a drone - and that was only state-of-the-are in the mid 1980s. There have reportedly been nuclear “demolition charges� that would be man-portable (so-called suitcase nukes). The smallest publicly acknowledged nuclear weapons were less than 6�/15.5cm in diameter, 39�/100cm in length and 75 pounds/33.5kg and were fired from howitzers. Projectiles that size were ROUTINELY wired up as Improvised Explosive Devices, hidden, and used against American forces in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. But unless you’re a member of a suicide cult or your last name happens to be Ahab, you don’t want to be very close by when you activate a weapon like that, which causes problems. A drone could carry a very small nuke. A large drone (Seriously, what do you think a Tomahawk missile is?!) can carry a big device. Strategic weapons (for the sake of argument, let’s call them 1 MT and higher) complete with aerodynamic/reentry shrouds, connectors and so forth are not much larger than 78 inches/200cm in length, 39 inches/100cm in diameter and 2,200 pounds/1,000kg, and they are more than ten times more destructive.
Of all the WMDs which would have been remaining post-US, it’s the nukes that are most sensitive. I remember some old literature from 1st ed. addressing that very point, and if the balkanization of the former USSR can be any meter stick, combined with old fluff, I believe most of those weapons would have been accounted for, certainly eliminating any substantial uncontrolled “stockpiles�. The delivery systems for very long range use tend to be very large and extremely expensive. A nuclear missile in its silo is a very large, manpower intensive (even for stable solid fuels) weapon to maintain, which translates into very high costs of ownership, and low return on investment from a corporate perspective. Even Ukraine and Belorussia handed their weapons back to Russia rather than have to deal with them.
So while I think this might make for a great run, going after the one “missing bomb� or something similar, I don’t see world-shaking consequences any worse that routinely seem to happen in the 6th world.
First of all, with all forms of so-called “Weapons of Mass Destruction�, as General Curtis Lemay or Iosef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev could have told you, the biggest issue is successfully delivering the weapon to your target. The challenges inherent are unique to each form of weapon.
Second of all, many non-nuclear weapons have a distinctly limited effective period after deployment: IIRC, VX breaks down in exposure to sunlight as do many weaponized bacteriological and viralogical weapons.
When looking at the biological weapons which might have been in storage prior to the break-up of the United States, they were largely weaponized versions of diseases that had plagued mankind for centuries. By 2070, simple off-the-shelf anti-biotic and anti-viral drugs probably have the ability to counter any or all of those weapons well within the incubation period. Also, many of those weapons can decay in storage, especially in poorly maintained storage, like a lost or forgotten warehouse. The difficulty of distribution of these agents varies largely by vector, but suffice it to say, wide spread distribution is not a simple matter. The easily spread inhalants are partly counteracted by the ubiquitous “nose plugs� or “filter masks� many denizens of the city wear when forced to go out on a dry day, and will have trouble propagating in rainy conditions. Furthermore, most urbanites inhabit dwellings that have very advanced particle filtration systems. Those that don’t, as a rule, aren’t worth going after because they don’t make a big enough impact, politically. Add to this the state of biological and genetic engineering, and the horrors that could come out of a modern lab would make the ugliest weapons of the late 20th century look like a common cold. So taken as a whole, stockpiles of the old weapons would not be a dire threat relatively speaking in 2070.
Chemical weapons are another matter, since their onset is very fast. But the only advantage to a “stockpile� of such weapons is the time required to mix up a given batch in wartime is prohibitive. The state of the chemical sciences in 2070 are such that mixing up small batches of old-style chemical agents for terror or low-level warfare is relatively simple. A declassified source I saw once listed one half of VX (a binary nerve agent) as isopropyl alcohol! So the old agents in storage are both weaker and less stable than what modern chemistry can provide. Distribution is also a problem, either because you need to distribute an aerosol directly or a gas which is highly subject to wind and precipitation. Now, emptying a gas into the enclosed system of a high-rise HVAC system would be nasty to be sure, but this isn’t really any more a WMD at that point than enough plastic explosive to drop the same building with all the occupants at their desks or in their beds. And if you don’t think the Corps or Lone Star have something ready to shoot down a “crop duster� that decides to start buzzing a ‘plex, think again.
As always, the most dangerous and persistent WMD is the nuclear warhead, be it fission, fusion or dirty. (The dirty bomb is subject to wind and precipitation, but it's effects are very persistent and difficult to remediate). The materials used to make the device are hazardous for extremely long periods of time. If sufficiently advanced, the weapon can be made extremely compact and very powerful. The W-80 warhead utilized by the US Military had a nominal yield around 100 thousand tons of TNT, or between 5.5 and 8.5 times as powerful as the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, but is less than 20�/51cm in diameter, less than a 68�/150cm long and reportedly weighs in less than 500 pounds/225kg. A package like that is easy to load into the bed of a pickup truck or a medium sized private aircraft - or even a drone - and that was only state-of-the-are in the mid 1980s. There have reportedly been nuclear “demolition charges� that would be man-portable (so-called suitcase nukes). The smallest publicly acknowledged nuclear weapons were less than 6�/15.5cm in diameter, 39�/100cm in length and 75 pounds/33.5kg and were fired from howitzers. Projectiles that size were ROUTINELY wired up as Improvised Explosive Devices, hidden, and used against American forces in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. But unless you’re a member of a suicide cult or your last name happens to be Ahab, you don’t want to be very close by when you activate a weapon like that, which causes problems. A drone could carry a very small nuke. A large drone (Seriously, what do you think a Tomahawk missile is?!) can carry a big device. Strategic weapons (for the sake of argument, let’s call them 1 MT and higher) complete with aerodynamic/reentry shrouds, connectors and so forth are not much larger than 78 inches/200cm in length, 39 inches/100cm in diameter and 2,200 pounds/1,000kg, and they are more than ten times more destructive.
Of all the WMDs which would have been remaining post-US, it’s the nukes that are most sensitive. I remember some old literature from 1st ed. addressing that very point, and if the balkanization of the former USSR can be any meter stick, combined with old fluff, I believe most of those weapons would have been accounted for, certainly eliminating any substantial uncontrolled “stockpiles�. The delivery systems for very long range use tend to be very large and extremely expensive. A nuclear missile in its silo is a very large, manpower intensive (even for stable solid fuels) weapon to maintain, which translates into very high costs of ownership, and low return on investment from a corporate perspective. Even Ukraine and Belorussia handed their weapons back to Russia rather than have to deal with them.
So while I think this might make for a great run, going after the one “missing bomb� or something similar, I don’t see world-shaking consequences any worse that routinely seem to happen in the 6th world.
Actually, nukes require regular expert maintenance by an industrial base to keep functional. Tritium decays pretty fast, the main nuclear material decays and becomes less pure, Polonium decays over time, batteries need to be replaced, being close to large amounts of nuclear material is apparently not great for electronics, etc. A 50 year old unmaintained nuke is not particularly likely to go off, if it does it's likely to go off at substantially below design yield and if it does go off at all the 2nd and 3rd stages won't.
Yep you're tritium decay is about 12 years, after 50 they're pretty much duds for a conventional one.
That's not to say that they aren't dangerous, plutonium by itself is one of the most toxic substances known to man and it hangs around quite a long time. Corps and big governments could maintain them fairly well, its not really in the best interests for a whole lot of reasons for a corp to ever deploy one in the contemporary set of rules they have to play with in the bigger picture, something about nuking your consumer base makes for bad profits and even worse PR more than anything else.
As for governments, well... they tend to change each election/coup so its any ones game of what would make them push a button.
That's not to say that they aren't dangerous, plutonium by itself is one of the most toxic substances known to man and it hangs around quite a long time. Corps and big governments could maintain them fairly well, its not really in the best interests for a whole lot of reasons for a corp to ever deploy one in the contemporary set of rules they have to play with in the bigger picture, something about nuking your consumer base makes for bad profits and even worse PR more than anything else.
As for governments, well... they tend to change each election/coup so its any ones game of what would make them push a button.
QUOTE (kzt @ May 18 2009, 03:52 AM)
Actually, nukes require regular expert maintenance by an industrial base to keep functional. Tritium decays pretty fast, the main nuclear material decays and becomes less pure, Polonium decays over time, batteries need to be replaced, being close to large amounts of nuclear material is apparently not great for electronics, etc. A 50 year old unmaintained nuke is not particularly likely to go off, if it does it's likely to go off at substantially below design yield and if it does go off at all the 2nd and 3rd stages won't.
Hmm, I DID leave out a comment about upkeep in the Nuclear entry didn't I? My apologies. I think I though (*sigh*) I covered that with the costs of covering the long range delivery systems, but I separated that out, didn't I? Oh well, thanks for hitting that. But even a "dud" thermonuclear weapon will take out a really nice chunk of a city. And the contamination will actually be worse locally because the fissile materials will have been proprtionately much less dispersed than from a full detonation.
Stephen Kenson touched upon this subject briefly in a SR novel that was published in 2006. I believe the book was titled "Poison Agendas."
this was true in the cold war era, where the objective was to make them with the highest possible yield for a given weight and volume. IRL, the united states has been starting to move towards more "user friendly" nukes, which don't require nearly as much dangerous maintenance.
a weapon that doesn't fulfill it's projected yield is called a "fizzle" btw. and in most ways, a fizzle is far worse than the full yield of a weapon, due to contamination from the unspent pit, and booster, if it's a multistage weapon.
I'll admit, my info is all Cold War Era and right after.
Oh, and don't forget the jacketing for the "Enhanced Area Denial Weapons" from the bad old days designed to make the region uninhabitable for longer periods or time, or the "enhanced radiation" jacketing for neutron weapons.
The more "user friendly" nukes I'm familiar have smaller warheads, designed to be used in an overlapping airburst pattern and timed detonation in order to achieve maximum destruction for minimum use. Don't forget that another big bummer is the amount of fissionable material you need toward the explosive weight isn't as straight forward as people think. Doubling the amount of fissionable material does NOT double the explosive weight of the charge. And doubling the explosive weight does NOT double the radius of destruction. The math is a little more complex that that.
Thanks. I know I really glossed over it, but the post was already longer than I wanted. I chose to focus on "terorist" or "small force" related and storage/maintenance related elements over some of the finer technical details. You did a pretty good job yourself.
Drek. I did!
And yet another WMD I should have considered. It's only logical that you have a way to counter-force your oponent's C3I2 (Command Control Communications Intelligence and Information) infrastructure and capabilities. I like the analogy especially well.
There's another reason you leave out: credibility. With "modern" computer aided design and manufacturing, the hardest part about churning out a nuclear device is obtaining and refining the fisile materials. But the total effort represented in the production of even a handful of "advanced" multi-stage thermonuclear devices and their delivery systems is but a fraction of the cost of something like a carrier battle group or an armored corps and all the maintenance and logistical (and training) costs associated with them. They are the ultimate proof of legitimacy, the keys that gain you entrance to the international executive washroom. Their threat must be honored by every other player, regardless of the relative size of the stockpiles.
And if you design a weapon whose yield is dialable from say a dozen kilotons to a megaton or more (Did somebody say B61?), the threat is even more sincere, because you can't very well launch a Trident II D5 missile to take out a single small valley or hardened research facility or equivalent pinpoint target. But if you could use any one of your dialable devices on either a huge counter-value target (say, a city) or a counter-force target (say, an air base or military base) or all the way down to a counter-asset target (where you could hit a very tough underground target and not manage to disturb much around a couple city blocks with little fallout), the likelyhood of the use of such a weapon rises dramatically, forcing both sides to act with even more caution. With full-up strategic monster-weapons (SS-18 Satan), it would HAVE to be a MAD scenario, because once you loft something like that (50+ megaton warhead. It comes under "no, you're kidding, right?") the gloves come all the way off. But if the other guy knows you can hit his really tough sites and not drive the surrounding property values too far down, it changes his candor immensely.
IIRC, it would be fair to say the Chicago nuke (Which if people did NOT know, the actual "ground zero" was the old F.A.S.A. corporate headquarters street address. Can't say they didn't have a sense of humor.) was one of those cute "sub-tactical" models like the counter-asset weapons I mentioned above. It's a category that was worked on feverishly in the late 1950's and shelved (yes, the Army DID ask for a prototype nuclear hand grenade, able to wipe out a city block... right until some sergeant in the design phase asked "Uh, Sir, just how the hell far did you want somebody to have to throw that thing?"), reawakened in the very late 1970's, then shelved with the end of the Cold War, and reawakened a decade yet again as the United States faced ever tougher and deeper hardened targets. And that leaves out the "Enhanced Radiation" or "Neutron" bomb, designed to kill living cells with a dramatically reduced blast radius to minimize infrastructure damage. *shudders* Nasty piece of work, that.
And as a foot note, two related items that should be mentioned: the Electromagnetic Pulse attendant in any nuclear detonation, and the FOBS the Soviets cooked up (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System; featured but BADLY mischaracterized in the James Bond movie Goldeneye.) to disrupt communications and modern eletronics. With the increasing use of optical computing architecture by 2070, the threat of the baseline EMP is very limited, but the short term effects are not to be overstated in relationship to wireless communications. The US discovered with their early very high altitude nuclear testing in the early 1950's that when a nuclear device detonates above the stratosphere (I think that's the right atmospheric layer, but this is really fuzzy these days) the energy pulse is actually wider and more intense. The FOBS set off a massive nuke in near earth orbit (say 100 km). Again, the physical damage is minor, but relatively delicate satellite systems might be knocked out (think really wicked solar flare) and wireless communications would (theoretically) have been disrupted for an extended period.
Interesting topic. Odd place to see it crop up.
I think you missed a big part of the point of WMDs. They give a nation (or corporation or whatever) credibility, and that is unlikely to change in sixty or so years. You don't have to maintain Cold War size stockpiles and R&D programs. If a country as economically bereft as North Korea can not only develop and test but EXPORT the technologies needed for nuclear weapons, any nation with a functional economy and decent industrial base can maintain a "token" arsenal and keep their place at the big table. And they are still much cheaper to obtain and maintain than "capital" conventional forces that would give you equal "weight".
If I may use a literary reference, from Frank Herbert's "Dune", there are repeated references to the "House Atomics", and the connotations imply that those weapons existence is among the keys to a family being treated as one of the "great houses". This is not dissimilar. It is why so many countries are now eagerly seeking to join the nuclear club: in a post-Cold War (if you believe THAT one I have some bottom land in Brooklyn with a great piece of infrastructure on it, cheap) world, one way to make the United States take you seriously and treat with you as an adult is to have a nuke tucked in your hip pocket. Even if we accept Iran's claims about pursuing peaceful nuclear power, once you have the means to generate what is needed, you're "nuclear capable" (think modern Japan, who has forsworn nuclear weapons but more than has the capability to produce them in useful numbers) and that's a big deal.
That was the plan. Not any more. The new plan is that we'll all join hands and happily live in a world free of nukes because everybody really loves everyone else.
In the 6th World the USSR didn't collapse until like 2030.
Notice I didn't argue with the points about asymetrical warfare and magic and all the other 6th world goodies.
But it doesn't really matter if Kerplackistan only has one nuke: if they have the ability to deliver it to one of your cities and you know you can't stop that delivery method with 100% certainty, it doesn't matter to your dead citizens and their surviving families that you turned all of Kerplackistan into a self-lighting glass-surfaced parking lot exactly twenty two minutes after they vaporized your city. In the Cold War, it was MAD because the threat had to be SO severe, the other fella would never seriously contemplate his first strike: he knew there would be nothing left. But if you are pushing the nutzy leaders of Kerplackistan into a corner they can't get out of and their people will literally hang them if they fail, there's not much stopping them from using that one missile, a final gesture of defiance from their funeral pyre lit by the spark of a splitting atom. MAD assumed rational actors on both sides, and in a multi-polar world, you can't always guarantee that.
Let's take a look at that...
OK Mr. Dicktater has his old refit Soviet Disunion ICBM system, and a knockoff old Atlas bunker complex. Now, this is cheap and easy to build in 2050+. Hey, give me access to people and some money, and I could build you one of those bunker systems, so it isn't as hard as people think.
So, of course, the first thing on his mind is going to be securing it via Astral penetration.
In Shadowtech and a few others, they mention a strain of harmless bacteria that is magically active, but doesn't really do anything but float around in the air and breed. That means that the whole interior of said bunker is nothing but one big magical glow. Even providing you could find the thing under 50 feet of concrete covered by dirt and trees with dispersed ventilation systems and all of that, probably run on canned air with scrubbers, and all that fun stuff.
Mr. Dicktater didn't get where he did by not knowing about Astral security and protecting from ritual sorcery. It can't be as easy as making a Force 6 attack, or every single politician would be dead. It's a dream come true that people wouldn't be able to pass up. So taking him out without a "Kill me, and the missile launches Mr. Bond" option going off is going to be difficult at best, meaning a multi-pronged attack, both on the leader, and on ALL facilities. And those attacks would have to be lightning fast, and ALL succeed, or launches go. Even if it's going to hit neighboring Drekistan, it'll cause everyone to go crazy.
So what if you have 10X the capability as he does. If he can reach out and touch even ONE of your allies, then you have a problem.
But it isn't just Mr. Dicktater, it's the head of Fuchi, the head of Aztechnology. Everyone who is everyone has NBC-R capability.
If you don't, then that means they can tell you what to do.
And nobody wants to be on that end.
Making one or a series of weapons at this scale IS doable, but a single vegicle-scale weapon, or even a six-pack of them, is going to have a fairly limited dispersal patern in relation to one of the mega-plexes of the 6th world. As a weapon of terror or what-have-you, they are plausible and effective. But getting enough resources for a rogue group to succesfully wipe out a city, like you could with one high-yield nuke, seems somewhat less plausible.
Arguing about the resources of the Megas themselves is pointless: they manufacture the hardware they sell to the governments, and if you think they didn't have a little "manufacturing over-run", think again. A flight of FederatedBoeing Eagle-Cs (or the hinted at, even spiffier toys excluded from Arsenal) armed with higher yeild chemical "bombs" could easily threaten an entire 'plex. I think, given the phrasing of the OP, we're really talking about shadow-groups of one stripe or another as the theoretical users, not organizations with on-the-book assets and resources that can handle the job. Agreed?
I'm sorry, discussing the security measures of Wildfire Laboratories on this forum is not permitted.
>>>>>[Extract needed ASAP. High End Runners only need apply. LTG: 555-35634]<<<<
--Rusted Scrap Metal <23:18:44/17-5-52>
I wouldn't bet on that. If they have a professional (And make no mistake, guys with this kind of knowledge are tracked by most intelligence agencies even if they are fat, old, and sitting on the couch watching Spongebob) the guy could not only design and manufacture the chemical weapon with stuff easy to find through a fixer, much less the kind of stuff you find floating around in SR. Then, he's going to know how to deliver it. It would require some modification of the warhead, but the dissemination attack vehicle wouldn't be that difficult. Then combine the state of the art electronics in SR, when weighed against modern smart weapons, and you could do a serious attack on a megaplex through aerial attack vectors. This would also have to include "multi-stage" attacks on megacorp buildings, most of which would have the multiple types of protection because Shadowrun is the product of late 80's Cold War Paranioa, and the reason why it was so much fun, is that EVERYONE was paranoid in that game. Those buildings would spend more on air scrubbers, positive pressure systems, internal localized circuit atmospheric systems for high priority areas, and all of that. This would require multiple attacks on the buildings.
We're talking a group.
If you're going to throw the PC's against something planning something like this, you need to think long and hard.
Either they're going to do a sarin gas attack on the subway, or they're a professional group who is about to cause some serious damage all around.
Oh, I agree.
I mean, having a serious discussion on putting together a group of Sixth World 2050+ freaks with a specialist on hand would be interesting.
As long as we dance around some things.
Having just been to the movies and seen a certain trailer repeatedly, I guess the obvious response would have to be "CoooooooBRAAAAAAA!"
Wow, I can hear the crickets...
That was my point: to execute that sort simultaneous of multi-point attack against what are by any definition of the word "hardened facilities", with genuine surprise, we're getting out of small para-military units here. And those off-the-shelf missiles you're modifying may be obtainable, but they're kinda big. One off, that's big. Multiples gets a little nutzo. Saturation strikes from a minimum safe distance beyond range of short-range counter-battery fire and rapid-response units would call for either a LOT of medium sized vehicles or a couple mother huge launch platforms. Consider that the Chapparal SAM platform had a quad mount of Sidewinders, one of the LIGHTEST air-to-air weapons with a range of... well, in 2070 with modern propellants at low altitude with a functionally "motionless" starting platform, let's call it 25 km optimistically, and IT was mounted on a fragging M113 chassis. Said missile is only 5"/75mm in diameter and a paltry 21 pounds / 9.5kg of "payload". Now the Maverick AGM weighs in about three and a half times heavier, is designed for low altitude use, has a range of probably close to 40 km with 2070 fuels, is 12"/180mm in diameter carrying a 300 pound/140kg warhead in a late model. But that's a big heavy weapon again, so we're talking singletons dispersend on multiple networked platforms or a couple big mobile batteries. With a chemical agent, be it ever so potent, physics plays no favorites, and "volume" is a major consideration as much as "weight" for achieving a wide saturation patern with lethal concentrations.
Ok, now I'm starting to scare myself because ... oh, hell...
Good night, sleep tight, don't let the caustic blister enhanced nerve agents eat your flesh while your central nervous system decomposes.
(Edited to read 2072, I was a toddler in 2052)
>>>>>[Comcode: SCRAMBLED; Trace: FAILED]<<<<<
Decryption sequence: COMPLETE
[RSM, long time. I'm in.
Smash'n'grab, so Crystal will bring her toys...
Unless you want to try quiet like, then I will need more data.
Just gimmie Lat/Long and time.
You know how to reach me.
Kisses.]
--Kerenshara <23:28:03/17-5-72>
Well, if you've GOT the mother huge MLRS, and you refitted guidance packages to ensure proper primary dispersal and fixed up the warheads for broader pattern...
I get inside my lead-lined box with canned air, food and water for 30 days and pray like heck the cavalry can decon the place before it runs out while I play solataire.
You SERIOUSLY know how to improve the sales of TummsTM, don't you?
Heh. That's without even shifting into professional paranoia.
And the MRLS wagon isn't even that big. Let's see, if I remember right, it was a 2 6-pack pod system, HEMMIT front chassis, a little larger than a semi-truck. Mother huge by normal standards, but still, not that hard. The big thing is... well... we might want to get into specifics. Suffice to say, that a Rigger mechanic with access to basic parts, some technical schematics, and some other stuff, and a MRLS wagon could be manufactured. I can even think of how the warhead submunition pattern could be broader right off the top of my head. Probably with double bursting charge and airfoil... Hmmm... it wouldn't be that hard in the SR universe.
Remember, in the SR universe, the Soviet Union didn't collapse until the 2030's. Think of the steady progression in the NBC-R field, as well as the dispersal of the storage and manufacture areas (which was done during the Cold War for specific reasons) across wide areas.
Now, remember that the Crash went after high security databases (some believe that the Crash was caused by a mutating dog-brain attack MAD program set) and think of what military databases are. Don't be fooled, the data on the locations, not the mention the inventories and all that great stuff, involved in a hotloaded FSTS or ASP is classified at least Secret, and often moves into Top Secret or TS-SSBI real quickly.
Then combine that with the split up of the nations, and the Ghost Dance. How much stuff got lost? How much stuff was put under volcanic ash and never recovered.
Also, you have a lot of people with a general piss-off, you have medical technology able to permit street docs to perform high end implantation surgery in a hotel room, you have a proliferation of weapons and equipment out there.
If you want a Shadowrun mission involving NBC-R weaponry, I could give you ten scenarios in less than hour.
Everything from a chemical weapon attack like in the posting above, or a enriched fuel rod incandescence radiological attack on an enclosed area, or a biological attack across a certain vector to allow a Corp to move in and take over.
Actually, the MLRS was built off the M2 Bradley chassis - it's literally a tank. Call it 25 tons.
But I guess the point always has been that the 2070s chemicals and ESPECIALLY biologicals would make the old stuff pale. And like I mentioned, especially against the old biologicals, 2070s OTC antiviral and antibiotics would be like ThlenolTM for a flu. No doubt with 2070s tech it's doable, and not actually that hard to pull off a very large scale attack. But there'd be little point in raiding the old stashes to do it.
The exception of course is the fisionables in the nukes. Uranium 235 is a cast iron bitch to separate. And plutonium, while easier, requires some high level (as in LARGE) gear. But if you recycled a bunch of old pits and casings (Depleted Uranium, useful for the high yield hybrid devices, but that's separate) you could reprocess and remanufacture tha hard parts. The rest of the bits are the equivalent of Radio Shack by 2070. And commercial explosives by then are precise enough to handle the implosive first stage trigger. Three shakes later and you're in business. THAT's something that could be highly dangerous, especially if there were old schematics to explain the REALLY advanced stuff (like the W88) to the neophyte wannabe supervillain.
OK, THERE is a scarry (and plot twisting) shadowrun. Prime runners, only, please.
Was it? It's been almost 20 years since I've seen ones, and I'll admit, I was exhausted the last time I saw one, and only wanted a shower, some time in the bunk, and some stitches checked.
The most important part of the old stashes, from our wannabe supervillain's point of view, is the simple schematics that he can get out of pulling everything apart.
I know that it isn't as simple to make a dispersion device as I've deliberately made it sound.
Then again, don't knock all the pre-Crash stuff. I can't remember which book it was, Sly was one of the characters and it involved a piece of technology from Pre-Crash that would allow someone to read and alter data coming down a fiber optic cable. It was mentioned that while most of the stuff in those databases were replicated and redone, not everything was replicated. There was talk about the fiber-optic reading/writing system, some stuff involving vehicles, encryption stuff.
So it isn't entirely out of canon for something interesting to show up in an old log some where, that our would-be supervillain finds, and sends his minions to recover something very very very nasty that the Corps had all given up on or didn't even think of researching, but there it sits somewhere, in the dark, waiting.
They're pretty good runs. Yeah, I've been a part of them back in SRI and SRII, as well as GM'd them for other systems.
Mix in some toxic shamans rarely, and you've got some nasty stuff.
It's in the timeline, and was mentioned whenever the Desert Wars comes up, also in Year of the Comet, Shadows of Asia, and SOTA 2064
EDIT: whoops, missed a big section on it in Target: Wastelands
by the way;
NO ONE uses salted bombs. no one has ever built one. no group with an ounce of sanity ever will. those who do will have infamy forever. their names will become a curse.
[ Spoiler ]
Kerenshara did a pretty good job describing a lot of the issues with NBC( R ) weapons.
One issue is the Second Great Ghost Dance that took place like 2051 or 2052, where multiple groups of coordinated runners disabled most of the existing NBC( R) stocks were disabled through magic.
Another issue is the fact that I highly doubt that any of the players would not have stocks of munitions around. With the growth of chemical and biological sciences, NBC ( R) weapons would more than likely be more lethal, not less, and the controls and safeguards would be even more stringent.
Don't forget that there are "Thor" class sats, capable of being used for pinpoint kinetic strikes (as addressed in another novel, the one with Wolf going to Hawaii IIRC).
Now, you have Umatilla, Black Briar, Johnston Atoll, Miesau, Flenseguen, Grebenhiem, and all of those locations (I only know the old NATO ones, and I can't really remember the old Warsaw Pact depot names). They'd either still be in use by various governments (good place to keep stuff is places that are already contaminated, and the background count from all those years would keep away mages (just watch out for the toxics baby!) from scouting, and to be honest, the defenses those places are SUPPOSED to have (not the lousy ones that eventually got approved) would keep away most runners) as storage areas, or be used as destruction points for old, unstable stuff.
Now, the point about maintenance is spot on. The electronics need it at least 6 months, and that's trained technician, not just board swapping.
Chemical rounds need steady maintenance too. They have to be stored upright, checked constantly for any sign of rust, and have the copper rotation ring checked for decay. Now, most modern chemical weapons are binary or trinary rounds. This requires a certain RPM speed to rupture the canister and mix the chemicals. Then you have the bursting charges, usually Comp B-4, used to crack round casing and cause the chemical to disperse (this is used for high altitude artillery attacks), and then... Well, it really doesn't matter. What I'm getting at is chemical round require maintenance and proper storage, and most doctrine requires it to be stored in a geologically stable area, away from population centers, etc.
Biological agents are a whole different ballgame, and to be honest, for the most part, NOBODY wants to use them. Biological agents fall in a few categories, but that doesn't matter either. Storage on those is supposed to be pretty intense (although drawdowns in the real world caused some lessening of those strictures, so we can assume that the same problem has happened in the 6th World) and highly secure, but the chance of them escaping can be a minimized with proper precautions?
With the Matrix being around, and the coding being around for some nasty stuff, you can bet your last nuyen that there are secure labs with some of the nastiest logic bombs and hardware burning software out there. Deckers who sit in the Matrix equivalent of an old Minuteman III silo in case the balloon goes up and it's time to destroy every bit of the Matrix they can lay their hands on. There would be nasty stuff out there designed to attack cyberwear, and all kinds of stuff.
What were talking about again? Oh, yeah, in the Sixth World.
Now, let's check out the old SR2 Shadowtech book. There's examples of nasty chemical and biological agents, and even an R class agent in there if you go with DOOM.
Corps would have their stocks, so would most nations. Even the smaller nations could build up a chemical weapons stock. After all, why would Multinational Corporations and all the nations stockpile it?
Simple: MAD
Remember that? Mutually Assured Destruction.
Now, that basically means: You geek me, I geek you, and your friends, and their friends, and everyone who knows them. You know, forget that, you geek me, I geek EVERYONE! ALL OF THEM! Even the kangaroos!
Remember, according to the Chicago bit, that even though Twist did the whole "kill the nukes" thing, even the corporations have redeveloped tactical nuclear weapons. (Now, tactical nuclear weapons are between 15 and 750 kt weapons, initially designed with the thought of breaking up the old Warsaw Pact "red steamroller" tank rush through the Fulda Gap, so don't think these are 1-5 MT ICBM weapons, or the 1.5 KT 5 or 6-pack MiRV weapons for overlapping blast patterns to break apart cities) Remember, one was detonated in Chicago.
Now, there's also biological and chemical weapons in several products (Shadowtech) as well as the biological weapon used in Chicago to destroy/disable the bug spirit flesh forms.
There's also nuclear carrier groups, and a few of the NAN nations had ICBM class weapons or boomer subs still armed.
That last part is the most critical. Yes, the kinetic impact will do serious damage, but since most weapons are designed for airburst (which does the most damage) the weapon would detonate at about 1500-15000 feet above the city (depending on the yield of the weapon) and the implosion trigger would cause what little material is in there to be blown into small chunks that would have to be found and recovered.
Ballistic tests have shown there will be some serious damage, but one thing to remember is how the weapons are designed. You have the implosion trigger, designed around shape charges, and what that will do is scatter hot chunks around the area, but not too far if detonated at ground level. Nuclear Emergency Response Teams have serious training in finding nuclear debris. Training exercises take place all the time, usually with... anyway, a properly supported team that is well trained can clean up the nuclear debris in under 36 hours. Combine it with upgraded sat scan tech to search for radiation sources and more than likely the cleanup time will be even faster.
Now, back to chemical weapons...
The average time from exposure to disabling will be on the average 30 seconds or lower. Some of the more nasty agents have an exposure to kill time of 8.7 seconds. In more than a few cases, the only chance you have is to get your suit and mask on between the round detonating in the air, and the chemical reaching you. Then, maybe, just maybe, with the injectors, if you're exposed, you can keep running for a few more hours. Whether or not you can survive nowadays is still up in the air, but for the most part, just go with the "if you're exposed, all your injector pack will do is keep you running for a few more hours, you're dead anyway."
Man, this turned long.
Suffice to say: A lot of the old storage areas would still be used, but any runner who thinks he's going to get in easy is in for a RUDE surprise. Megacorps will have them, most nations will have them, and with everything going on, I'd say it's pretty safe to say that there'd be a new Cold War, with versions of NATO and the Warsaw Pact forming up. Alliances would be built, then the various nations would be pushing as hard as they could to advance their stockpiles, as well as figuring out a way to make the opposition's weapons outdated and useless. There would be a return of special operations, and runners would find more and more work out there from government intelligence communities since "deniable assets" would be even more vital.
Man, now I forgot what I was trying to say because I went into lecture mode.
One issue is the Second Great Ghost Dance that took place like 2051 or 2052, where multiple groups of coordinated runners disabled most of the existing NBC( R) stocks were disabled through magic.
Another issue is the fact that I highly doubt that any of the players would not have stocks of munitions around. With the growth of chemical and biological sciences, NBC ( R) weapons would more than likely be more lethal, not less, and the controls and safeguards would be even more stringent.
Don't forget that there are "Thor" class sats, capable of being used for pinpoint kinetic strikes (as addressed in another novel, the one with Wolf going to Hawaii IIRC).
Now, you have Umatilla, Black Briar, Johnston Atoll, Miesau, Flenseguen, Grebenhiem, and all of those locations (I only know the old NATO ones, and I can't really remember the old Warsaw Pact depot names). They'd either still be in use by various governments (good place to keep stuff is places that are already contaminated, and the background count from all those years would keep away mages (just watch out for the toxics baby!) from scouting, and to be honest, the defenses those places are SUPPOSED to have (not the lousy ones that eventually got approved) would keep away most runners) as storage areas, or be used as destruction points for old, unstable stuff.
Now, the point about maintenance is spot on. The electronics need it at least 6 months, and that's trained technician, not just board swapping.
Chemical rounds need steady maintenance too. They have to be stored upright, checked constantly for any sign of rust, and have the copper rotation ring checked for decay. Now, most modern chemical weapons are binary or trinary rounds. This requires a certain RPM speed to rupture the canister and mix the chemicals. Then you have the bursting charges, usually Comp B-4, used to crack round casing and cause the chemical to disperse (this is used for high altitude artillery attacks), and then... Well, it really doesn't matter. What I'm getting at is chemical round require maintenance and proper storage, and most doctrine requires it to be stored in a geologically stable area, away from population centers, etc.
Biological agents are a whole different ballgame, and to be honest, for the most part, NOBODY wants to use them. Biological agents fall in a few categories, but that doesn't matter either. Storage on those is supposed to be pretty intense (although drawdowns in the real world caused some lessening of those strictures, so we can assume that the same problem has happened in the 6th World) and highly secure, but the chance of them escaping can be a minimized with proper precautions?
With the Matrix being around, and the coding being around for some nasty stuff, you can bet your last nuyen that there are secure labs with some of the nastiest logic bombs and hardware burning software out there. Deckers who sit in the Matrix equivalent of an old Minuteman III silo in case the balloon goes up and it's time to destroy every bit of the Matrix they can lay their hands on. There would be nasty stuff out there designed to attack cyberwear, and all kinds of stuff.
What were talking about again? Oh, yeah, in the Sixth World.
Now, let's check out the old SR2 Shadowtech book. There's examples of nasty chemical and biological agents, and even an R class agent in there if you go with DOOM.
Corps would have their stocks, so would most nations. Even the smaller nations could build up a chemical weapons stock. After all, why would Multinational Corporations and all the nations stockpile it?
Simple: MAD
Remember that? Mutually Assured Destruction.
Now, that basically means: You geek me, I geek you, and your friends, and their friends, and everyone who knows them. You know, forget that, you geek me, I geek EVERYONE! ALL OF THEM! Even the kangaroos!
Remember, according to the Chicago bit, that even though Twist did the whole "kill the nukes" thing, even the corporations have redeveloped tactical nuclear weapons. (Now, tactical nuclear weapons are between 15 and 750 kt weapons, initially designed with the thought of breaking up the old Warsaw Pact "red steamroller" tank rush through the Fulda Gap, so don't think these are 1-5 MT ICBM weapons, or the 1.5 KT 5 or 6-pack MiRV weapons for overlapping blast patterns to break apart cities) Remember, one was detonated in Chicago.
Now, there's also biological and chemical weapons in several products (Shadowtech) as well as the biological weapon used in Chicago to destroy/disable the bug spirit flesh forms.
There's also nuclear carrier groups, and a few of the NAN nations had ICBM class weapons or boomer subs still armed.
QUOTE
But even a "dud" thermonuclear weapon will take out a really nice chunk of a city. And the contamination will actually be worse locally because the fissile materials will have been proprtionately much less dispersed than from a full detonation.
That last part is the most critical. Yes, the kinetic impact will do serious damage, but since most weapons are designed for airburst (which does the most damage) the weapon would detonate at about 1500-15000 feet above the city (depending on the yield of the weapon) and the implosion trigger would cause what little material is in there to be blown into small chunks that would have to be found and recovered.
Ballistic tests have shown there will be some serious damage, but one thing to remember is how the weapons are designed. You have the implosion trigger, designed around shape charges, and what that will do is scatter hot chunks around the area, but not too far if detonated at ground level. Nuclear Emergency Response Teams have serious training in finding nuclear debris. Training exercises take place all the time, usually with... anyway, a properly supported team that is well trained can clean up the nuclear debris in under 36 hours. Combine it with upgraded sat scan tech to search for radiation sources and more than likely the cleanup time will be even faster.
Now, back to chemical weapons...
The average time from exposure to disabling will be on the average 30 seconds or lower. Some of the more nasty agents have an exposure to kill time of 8.7 seconds. In more than a few cases, the only chance you have is to get your suit and mask on between the round detonating in the air, and the chemical reaching you. Then, maybe, just maybe, with the injectors, if you're exposed, you can keep running for a few more hours. Whether or not you can survive nowadays is still up in the air, but for the most part, just go with the "if you're exposed, all your injector pack will do is keep you running for a few more hours, you're dead anyway."
Man, this turned long.
Suffice to say: A lot of the old storage areas would still be used, but any runner who thinks he's going to get in easy is in for a RUDE surprise. Megacorps will have them, most nations will have them, and with everything going on, I'd say it's pretty safe to say that there'd be a new Cold War, with versions of NATO and the Warsaw Pact forming up. Alliances would be built, then the various nations would be pushing as hard as they could to advance their stockpiles, as well as figuring out a way to make the opposition's weapons outdated and useless. There would be a return of special operations, and runners would find more and more work out there from government intelligence communities since "deniable assets" would be even more vital.
Man, now I forgot what I was trying to say because I went into lecture mode.
QUOTE (kzt @ May 18 2009, 01:52 AM)
Actually, nukes require regular expert maintenance by an industrial base to keep functional. Tritium decays pretty fast, the main nuclear material decays and becomes less pure, Polonium decays over time, batteries need to be replaced, being close to large amounts of nuclear material is apparently not great for electronics, etc. A 50 year old unmaintained nuke is not particularly likely to go off, if it does it's likely to go off at substantially below design yield and if it does go off at all the 2nd and 3rd stages won't.
this was true in the cold war era, where the objective was to make them with the highest possible yield for a given weight and volume. IRL, the united states has been starting to move towards more "user friendly" nukes, which don't require nearly as much dangerous maintenance.
a weapon that doesn't fulfill it's projected yield is called a "fizzle" btw. and in most ways, a fizzle is far worse than the full yield of a weapon, due to contamination from the unspent pit, and booster, if it's a multistage weapon.
QUOTE (Fix-it @ May 18 2009, 07:14 PM)
this was true in the cold war era, where the objective was to make them with the highest possible yield for a given weight and volume. IRL, the united states has been starting to move towards more "user friendly" nukes, which don't require nearly as much dangerous maintenance.
a weapon that doesn't fulfill it's projected yield is called a "fizzle" btw. and in most ways, a fizzle is far worse than the full yield of a weapon, due to contamination from the unspent pit, and booster, if it's a multistage weapon.
a weapon that doesn't fulfill it's projected yield is called a "fizzle" btw. and in most ways, a fizzle is far worse than the full yield of a weapon, due to contamination from the unspent pit, and booster, if it's a multistage weapon.
I'll admit, my info is all Cold War Era and right after.
Oh, and don't forget the jacketing for the "Enhanced Area Denial Weapons" from the bad old days designed to make the region uninhabitable for longer periods or time, or the "enhanced radiation" jacketing for neutron weapons.
The more "user friendly" nukes I'm familiar have smaller warheads, designed to be used in an overlapping airburst pattern and timed detonation in order to achieve maximum destruction for minimum use. Don't forget that another big bummer is the amount of fissionable material you need toward the explosive weight isn't as straight forward as people think. Doubling the amount of fissionable material does NOT double the explosive weight of the charge. And doubling the explosive weight does NOT double the radius of destruction. The math is a little more complex that that.
QUOTE (Rusted Scrap Metal @ May 18 2009, 10:12 PM)
Kerenshara did a pretty good job describing a lot of the issues with NBC( R ) weapons.
Thanks. I know I really glossed over it, but the post was already longer than I wanted. I chose to focus on "terorist" or "small force" related and storage/maintenance related elements over some of the finer technical details. You did a pretty good job yourself.
QUOTE
Don't forget that there are "Thor" class sats, capable of being used for pinpoint kinetic strikes (as addressed in another novel, the one with Wolf going to Hawaii IIRC).
Drek. I did!
QUOTE
With the Matrix being around, and the coding being around for some nasty stuff, you can bet your last nuyen that there are secure labs with some of the nastiest logic bombs and hardware burning software out there. Deckers who sit in the Matrix equivalent of an old Minuteman III silo in case the balloon goes up and it's time to destroy every bit of the Matrix they can lay their hands on. There would be nasty stuff out there designed to attack cyberwear, and all kinds of stuff.
And yet another WMD I should have considered. It's only logical that you have a way to counter-force your oponent's C3I2 (Command Control Communications Intelligence and Information) infrastructure and capabilities. I like the analogy especially well.
QUOTE
Corps would have their stocks, so would most nations. Even the smaller nations could build up a chemical weapons stock. After all, why would Multinational Corporations and all the nations stockpile it?
Simple: MAD
Remember that? Mutually Assured Destruction.
Now, that basically means: You geek me, I geek you, and your friends, and their friends, and everyone who knows them. You know, forget that, you geek me, I geek EVERYONE! ALL OF THEM! Even the kangaroos!
Simple: MAD
Remember that? Mutually Assured Destruction.
Now, that basically means: You geek me, I geek you, and your friends, and their friends, and everyone who knows them. You know, forget that, you geek me, I geek EVERYONE! ALL OF THEM! Even the kangaroos!
There's another reason you leave out: credibility. With "modern" computer aided design and manufacturing, the hardest part about churning out a nuclear device is obtaining and refining the fisile materials. But the total effort represented in the production of even a handful of "advanced" multi-stage thermonuclear devices and their delivery systems is but a fraction of the cost of something like a carrier battle group or an armored corps and all the maintenance and logistical (and training) costs associated with them. They are the ultimate proof of legitimacy, the keys that gain you entrance to the international executive washroom. Their threat must be honored by every other player, regardless of the relative size of the stockpiles.
And if you design a weapon whose yield is dialable from say a dozen kilotons to a megaton or more (Did somebody say B61?), the threat is even more sincere, because you can't very well launch a Trident II D5 missile to take out a single small valley or hardened research facility or equivalent pinpoint target. But if you could use any one of your dialable devices on either a huge counter-value target (say, a city) or a counter-force target (say, an air base or military base) or all the way down to a counter-asset target (where you could hit a very tough underground target and not manage to disturb much around a couple city blocks with little fallout), the likelyhood of the use of such a weapon rises dramatically, forcing both sides to act with even more caution. With full-up strategic monster-weapons (SS-18 Satan), it would HAVE to be a MAD scenario, because once you loft something like that (50+ megaton warhead. It comes under "no, you're kidding, right?") the gloves come all the way off. But if the other guy knows you can hit his really tough sites and not drive the surrounding property values too far down, it changes his candor immensely.
QUOTE
Remember, according to the Chicago bit, that even though Twist did the whole "kill the nukes" thing, even the corporations have redeveloped tactical nuclear weapons. (Now, tactical nuclear weapons are between 15 and 750 kt weapons, initially designed with the thought of breaking up the old Warsaw Pact "red steamroller" tank rush through the Fulda Gap, so don't think these are 1-5 MT ICBM weapons, or the 1.5 KT 5 or 6-pack MiRV weapons for overlapping blast patterns to break apart cities) Remember, one was detonated in Chicago.
IIRC, it would be fair to say the Chicago nuke (Which if people did NOT know, the actual "ground zero" was the old F.A.S.A. corporate headquarters street address. Can't say they didn't have a sense of humor.) was one of those cute "sub-tactical" models like the counter-asset weapons I mentioned above. It's a category that was worked on feverishly in the late 1950's and shelved (yes, the Army DID ask for a prototype nuclear hand grenade, able to wipe out a city block... right until some sergeant in the design phase asked "Uh, Sir, just how the hell far did you want somebody to have to throw that thing?"), reawakened in the very late 1970's, then shelved with the end of the Cold War, and reawakened a decade yet again as the United States faced ever tougher and deeper hardened targets. And that leaves out the "Enhanced Radiation" or "Neutron" bomb, designed to kill living cells with a dramatically reduced blast radius to minimize infrastructure damage. *shudders* Nasty piece of work, that.
And as a foot note, two related items that should be mentioned: the Electromagnetic Pulse attendant in any nuclear detonation, and the FOBS the Soviets cooked up (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System; featured but BADLY mischaracterized in the James Bond movie Goldeneye.) to disrupt communications and modern eletronics. With the increasing use of optical computing architecture by 2070, the threat of the baseline EMP is very limited, but the short term effects are not to be overstated in relationship to wireless communications. The US discovered with their early very high altitude nuclear testing in the early 1950's that when a nuclear device detonates above the stratosphere (I think that's the right atmospheric layer, but this is really fuzzy these days) the energy pulse is actually wider and more intense. The FOBS set off a massive nuke in near earth orbit (say 100 km). Again, the physical damage is minor, but relatively delicate satellite systems might be knocked out (think really wicked solar flare) and wireless communications would (theoretically) have been disrupted for an extended period.
Interesting topic. Odd place to see it crop up.
Putting it very simply, NBC's are a bit like the AK47, great for their time, great now and will still in most likelyhood, kill someone in 2070 as well as they did in 1950. But they're pretty old and tired after 120 years and you'll find yourself spending more time and money keeping it operational than actually using it, then you've got to find ammo, parts and teach people that are unfamiliar, how to use it.
People have covered the basics of maintaining NBC's, they're not easy to live with and certainly not cheap, that's one thing a balkanised country doesn't tend to have a lot of compared to a large country and thats a budget to cover an expensive military deterrent which you'll probably never use, they'd be running on a shoestring as-is and outsourcing most of their industrial needs to corporations.
Politicians for all sorts of reasons will cut into a budget with their short-term priorities, even tyrants have priorities that don't necessarily mean they'll have the readies to keep their favourite nuke happy probably because they've blown last years budget on the thing already and have to spend this years budget quelling civil insurection from food riots... but you get that in the big jobs
Tactically there's all kind of other ways of achieving what a WMD does without the necessity of slopping around nasty chemicals, bugs and radioactives. Nanotech has a number of applications that don't necessitate that anyone actually dies directly, by attacking a countries electricity supply for example in selected targets, destroys their ability to manufacture food, medicine weapons or fuel for a few years until the nanite stops functioning after a set period of time you've got it set for. Once they're unable to sustain a conventional war you can roll in and pound them or have them reduced to something easier to live with on your doorstep.
Magic and matrix attacks also seems to function outside the box of conventional military doctrine to cripple key areas or people you've got problems with
People have covered the basics of maintaining NBC's, they're not easy to live with and certainly not cheap, that's one thing a balkanised country doesn't tend to have a lot of compared to a large country and thats a budget to cover an expensive military deterrent which you'll probably never use, they'd be running on a shoestring as-is and outsourcing most of their industrial needs to corporations.
Politicians for all sorts of reasons will cut into a budget with their short-term priorities, even tyrants have priorities that don't necessarily mean they'll have the readies to keep their favourite nuke happy probably because they've blown last years budget on the thing already and have to spend this years budget quelling civil insurection from food riots... but you get that in the big jobs
Tactically there's all kind of other ways of achieving what a WMD does without the necessity of slopping around nasty chemicals, bugs and radioactives. Nanotech has a number of applications that don't necessitate that anyone actually dies directly, by attacking a countries electricity supply for example in selected targets, destroys their ability to manufacture food, medicine weapons or fuel for a few years until the nanite stops functioning after a set period of time you've got it set for. Once they're unable to sustain a conventional war you can roll in and pound them or have them reduced to something easier to live with on your doorstep.
Magic and matrix attacks also seems to function outside the box of conventional military doctrine to cripple key areas or people you've got problems with
QUOTE (MKX @ May 19 2009, 12:51 AM)
Politicians for all sorts of reasons will cut into a budget with their short-term priorities, even tyrants have priorities that don't necessarily mean they'll have the readies to keep their favourite nuke happy probably because they've blown last years budget on the thing already and have to spend this years budget quelling civil insurection from food riots... but you get that in the big jobs
I think you missed a big part of the point of WMDs. They give a nation (or corporation or whatever) credibility, and that is unlikely to change in sixty or so years. You don't have to maintain Cold War size stockpiles and R&D programs. If a country as economically bereft as North Korea can not only develop and test but EXPORT the technologies needed for nuclear weapons, any nation with a functional economy and decent industrial base can maintain a "token" arsenal and keep their place at the big table. And they are still much cheaper to obtain and maintain than "capital" conventional forces that would give you equal "weight".
If I may use a literary reference, from Frank Herbert's "Dune", there are repeated references to the "House Atomics", and the connotations imply that those weapons existence is among the keys to a family being treated as one of the "great houses". This is not dissimilar. It is why so many countries are now eagerly seeking to join the nuclear club: in a post-Cold War (if you believe THAT one I have some bottom land in Brooklyn with a great piece of infrastructure on it, cheap) world, one way to make the United States take you seriously and treat with you as an adult is to have a nuke tucked in your hip pocket. Even if we accept Iran's claims about pursuing peaceful nuclear power, once you have the means to generate what is needed, you're "nuclear capable" (think modern Japan, who has forsworn nuclear weapons but more than has the capability to produce them in useful numbers) and that's a big deal.
QUOTE (Fix-it @ May 18 2009, 09:14 PM)
this was true in the cold war era, where the objective was to make them with the highest possible yield for a given weight and volume. IRL, the united states has been starting to move towards more "user friendly" nukes, which don't require nearly as much dangerous maintenance.
a weapon that doesn't fulfill it's projected yield is called a "fizzle" btw. and in most ways, a fizzle is far worse than the full yield of a weapon, due to contamination from the unspent pit, and booster, if it's a multistage weapon.
a weapon that doesn't fulfill it's projected yield is called a "fizzle" btw. and in most ways, a fizzle is far worse than the full yield of a weapon, due to contamination from the unspent pit, and booster, if it's a multistage weapon.
That was the plan. Not any more. The new plan is that we'll all join hands and happily live in a world free of nukes because everybody really loves everyone else.
In the 6th World the USSR didn't collapse until like 2030.
Not really, sure the dictator of your neighbouring satellite state of Kebabistan has his very own nuclear device or ten.
If you're a large country, you've got ten times the NBC capability, troops, resources and a handful of tricks up your sleeve that will leave Kebabistan going back to the iron age overnight and reading books by candle light. Sure they can reach out and touch you, do some damage, but essentially that just gives the bigger dog on the block just cause to WTF stomp them into the dirt completely.
Heck, the annoying individual might just wake up one morning in his bunker to find out that he's got massive amounts of ritual sorcery aimed at his arse and soon to be very melted.
I don't discount the conventional WMD's have some credibility and people will respect them, but there's more than one way to skin a cat as a solution.
If you're a large country, you've got ten times the NBC capability, troops, resources and a handful of tricks up your sleeve that will leave Kebabistan going back to the iron age overnight and reading books by candle light. Sure they can reach out and touch you, do some damage, but essentially that just gives the bigger dog on the block just cause to WTF stomp them into the dirt completely.
Heck, the annoying individual might just wake up one morning in his bunker to find out that he's got massive amounts of ritual sorcery aimed at his arse and soon to be very melted.
I don't discount the conventional WMD's have some credibility and people will respect them, but there's more than one way to skin a cat as a solution.
And if you want something really to give you sleepless nights...
A corporation or small nation (NAN member-states for example) could build a chemical weapon stockpile pretty quickly. To be honest, even making tabun or BZ wouldn't be that hard. And use in battlefield or even in the world of SR isn't as hard as some people think. To be honest, you could pretty much build a chemical weapon and the dissemination vehicle (NOT some crappy crop duster, but a quality item) in the world of SR with stuff right off the shelves, and maybe some small fixer purchases.
In a world where the gray/black market can let you get ahold of military grade vehicles and AVM's and AAM systems, with excellent ranges, you could build the delivery vehicle in a SR Rigger's garage. The chemical component, even if you did a binary method, could be manufactured quite easily. That means that a multi-national corporation or any of the nations are going to have stocks of chemical agents. And if you think the declassified stuff is nasty that you can read about nowadays, think what modern ones are like. Now consider how advances in advances molecular chemistry has done to the chemical weapons programs of the world of Shadowrun. The Holy Grail of a non-persistant chemical agent that does not affect animals, plants, create chemical stains or contamination, that has an antidote that lasts a long time and protects even against heavy long term exposure could very well be a reality in SR.
And don't quote movies, if you get a VX exposure, atropine is going to little more than keep you going. Now, since corrosive VX agents already exist, even your vaunted cyberfilters and tracheal filters aren't going to save you. And the Gods and Totems help you if some wiseass has mixed a blister agent in with the corrosive nerve agent. It's going to smoke everyone who comes into contact with it.
If that runner waltzes into the zone, the suits are going to have to be specially designed. A J-Series descendant at least, with internal air supply and complete and total environmental seal and able to stand up to corrosive agents. Plastic is out, since there already exists agents that can eat through the rubber of a mask and the plastic of J-Series suits.
High security bio-labs would have not only "thermal incineration" options for the inside, but would also have...
You know what... nevermind.
A corporation or small nation (NAN member-states for example) could build a chemical weapon stockpile pretty quickly. To be honest, even making tabun or BZ wouldn't be that hard. And use in battlefield or even in the world of SR isn't as hard as some people think. To be honest, you could pretty much build a chemical weapon and the dissemination vehicle (NOT some crappy crop duster, but a quality item) in the world of SR with stuff right off the shelves, and maybe some small fixer purchases.
In a world where the gray/black market can let you get ahold of military grade vehicles and AVM's and AAM systems, with excellent ranges, you could build the delivery vehicle in a SR Rigger's garage. The chemical component, even if you did a binary method, could be manufactured quite easily. That means that a multi-national corporation or any of the nations are going to have stocks of chemical agents. And if you think the declassified stuff is nasty that you can read about nowadays, think what modern ones are like. Now consider how advances in advances molecular chemistry has done to the chemical weapons programs of the world of Shadowrun. The Holy Grail of a non-persistant chemical agent that does not affect animals, plants, create chemical stains or contamination, that has an antidote that lasts a long time and protects even against heavy long term exposure could very well be a reality in SR.
And don't quote movies, if you get a VX exposure, atropine is going to little more than keep you going. Now, since corrosive VX agents already exist, even your vaunted cyberfilters and tracheal filters aren't going to save you. And the Gods and Totems help you if some wiseass has mixed a blister agent in with the corrosive nerve agent. It's going to smoke everyone who comes into contact with it.
If that runner waltzes into the zone, the suits are going to have to be specially designed. A J-Series descendant at least, with internal air supply and complete and total environmental seal and able to stand up to corrosive agents. Plastic is out, since there already exists agents that can eat through the rubber of a mask and the plastic of J-Series suits.
High security bio-labs would have not only "thermal incineration" options for the inside, but would also have...
You know what... nevermind.
QUOTE (MKX @ May 19 2009, 01:31 AM)
I don't discount the conventional WMD's have some credibility and people will respect them, but there's more than one way to skin a cat as a solution.
Notice I didn't argue with the points about asymetrical warfare and magic and all the other 6th world goodies.
But it doesn't really matter if Kerplackistan only has one nuke: if they have the ability to deliver it to one of your cities and you know you can't stop that delivery method with 100% certainty, it doesn't matter to your dead citizens and their surviving families that you turned all of Kerplackistan into a self-lighting glass-surfaced parking lot exactly twenty two minutes after they vaporized your city. In the Cold War, it was MAD because the threat had to be SO severe, the other fella would never seriously contemplate his first strike: he knew there would be nothing left. But if you are pushing the nutzy leaders of Kerplackistan into a corner they can't get out of and their people will literally hang them if they fail, there's not much stopping them from using that one missile, a final gesture of defiance from their funeral pyre lit by the spark of a splitting atom. MAD assumed rational actors on both sides, and in a multi-polar world, you can't always guarantee that.
QUOTE (MKX @ May 18 2009, 10:31 PM)
Not really, sure the dictator of your neighbouring satellite state of Kebabistan has his very own nuclear device or ten.
If you're a large country, you've got ten times the NBC capability, troops, resources and a handful of tricks up your sleeve that will leave Kebabistan going back to the iron age overnight and reading books by candle light. Sure they can reach out and touch you, do some damage, but essentially that just gives the bigger dog on the block just cause to WTF stomp them into the dirt completely.
Heck, the annoying individual might just wake up one morning in his bunker to find out that he's got massive amounts of ritual sorcery aimed at his arse and soon to be very melted.
I don't discount the conventional WMD's have some credibility and people will respect them, but there's more than one way to skin a cat as a solution.
If you're a large country, you've got ten times the NBC capability, troops, resources and a handful of tricks up your sleeve that will leave Kebabistan going back to the iron age overnight and reading books by candle light. Sure they can reach out and touch you, do some damage, but essentially that just gives the bigger dog on the block just cause to WTF stomp them into the dirt completely.
Heck, the annoying individual might just wake up one morning in his bunker to find out that he's got massive amounts of ritual sorcery aimed at his arse and soon to be very melted.
I don't discount the conventional WMD's have some credibility and people will respect them, but there's more than one way to skin a cat as a solution.
Let's take a look at that...
OK Mr. Dicktater has his old refit Soviet Disunion ICBM system, and a knockoff old Atlas bunker complex. Now, this is cheap and easy to build in 2050+. Hey, give me access to people and some money, and I could build you one of those bunker systems, so it isn't as hard as people think.
So, of course, the first thing on his mind is going to be securing it via Astral penetration.
In Shadowtech and a few others, they mention a strain of harmless bacteria that is magically active, but doesn't really do anything but float around in the air and breed. That means that the whole interior of said bunker is nothing but one big magical glow. Even providing you could find the thing under 50 feet of concrete covered by dirt and trees with dispersed ventilation systems and all of that, probably run on canned air with scrubbers, and all that fun stuff.
Mr. Dicktater didn't get where he did by not knowing about Astral security and protecting from ritual sorcery. It can't be as easy as making a Force 6 attack, or every single politician would be dead. It's a dream come true that people wouldn't be able to pass up. So taking him out without a "Kill me, and the missile launches Mr. Bond" option going off is going to be difficult at best, meaning a multi-pronged attack, both on the leader, and on ALL facilities. And those attacks would have to be lightning fast, and ALL succeed, or launches go. Even if it's going to hit neighboring Drekistan, it'll cause everyone to go crazy.
So what if you have 10X the capability as he does. If he can reach out and touch even ONE of your allies, then you have a problem.
But it isn't just Mr. Dicktater, it's the head of Fuchi, the head of Aztechnology. Everyone who is everyone has NBC-R capability.
If you don't, then that means they can tell you what to do.
And nobody wants to be on that end.
QUOTE (Rusted Scrap Metal @ May 19 2009, 01:34 AM)
In a world where the gray/black market can let you get ahold of military grade vehicles and AVM's and AAM systems, with excellent ranges, you could build the delivery vehicle in a SR Rigger's garage.
Making one or a series of weapons at this scale IS doable, but a single vegicle-scale weapon, or even a six-pack of them, is going to have a fairly limited dispersal patern in relation to one of the mega-plexes of the 6th world. As a weapon of terror or what-have-you, they are plausible and effective. But getting enough resources for a rogue group to succesfully wipe out a city, like you could with one high-yield nuke, seems somewhat less plausible.
Arguing about the resources of the Megas themselves is pointless: they manufacture the hardware they sell to the governments, and if you think they didn't have a little "manufacturing over-run", think again. A flight of FederatedBoeing Eagle-Cs (or the hinted at, even spiffier toys excluded from Arsenal) armed with higher yeild chemical "bombs" could easily threaten an entire 'plex. I think, given the phrasing of the OP, we're really talking about shadow-groups of one stripe or another as the theoretical users, not organizations with on-the-book assets and resources that can handle the job. Agreed?
QUOTE (Rusted Scrap Metal @ May 18 2009, 11:34 PM)
High security bio-labs would have not only "thermal incineration" options for the inside, but would also have...
You know what... nevermind.
You know what... nevermind.
I'm sorry, discussing the security measures of Wildfire Laboratories on this forum is not permitted.
QUOTE (kzt @ May 18 2009, 09:59 PM)
I'm sorry, discussing the security measures of Wildfire Laboratories on this forum is not permitted.
>>>>>[Extract needed ASAP. High End Runners only need apply. LTG: 555-35634]<<<<
--Rusted Scrap Metal <23:18:44/17-5-52>
QUOTE (Kerenshara @ May 18 2009, 09:52 PM)
Making one or a series of weapons at this scale IS doable, but a single vegicle-scale weapon, or even a six-pack of them, is going to have a fairly limited dispersal patern in relation to one of the mega-plexes of the 6th world. As a weapon of terror or what-have-you, they are plausible and effective. But getting enough resources for a rogue group to succesfully wipe out a city, like you could with one high-yield nuke, seems somewhat less plausible.
I wouldn't bet on that. If they have a professional (And make no mistake, guys with this kind of knowledge are tracked by most intelligence agencies even if they are fat, old, and sitting on the couch watching Spongebob) the guy could not only design and manufacture the chemical weapon with stuff easy to find through a fixer, much less the kind of stuff you find floating around in SR. Then, he's going to know how to deliver it. It would require some modification of the warhead, but the dissemination attack vehicle wouldn't be that difficult. Then combine the state of the art electronics in SR, when weighed against modern smart weapons, and you could do a serious attack on a megaplex through aerial attack vectors. This would also have to include "multi-stage" attacks on megacorp buildings, most of which would have the multiple types of protection because Shadowrun is the product of late 80's Cold War Paranioa, and the reason why it was so much fun, is that EVERYONE was paranoid in that game. Those buildings would spend more on air scrubbers, positive pressure systems, internal localized circuit atmospheric systems for high priority areas, and all of that. This would require multiple attacks on the buildings.
We're talking a group.
If you're going to throw the PC's against something planning something like this, you need to think long and hard.
Either they're going to do a sarin gas attack on the subway, or they're a professional group who is about to cause some serious damage all around.
QUOTE
Arguing about the resources of the Megas themselves is pointless: they manufacture the hardware they sell to the governments, and if you think they didn't have a little "manufacturing over-run", think again. A flight of FederatedBoeing Eagle-Cs (or the hinted at, even spiffier toys excluded from Arsenal) armed with higher yeild chemical "bombs" could easily threaten an entire 'plex. I think, given the phrasing of the OP, we're really talking about shadow-groups of one stripe or another as the theoretical users, not organizations with on-the-book assets and resources that can handle the job. Agreed?
Oh, I agree.
I mean, having a serious discussion on putting together a group of Sixth World 2050+ freaks with a specialist on hand would be interesting.
As long as we dance around some things.
QUOTE (Rusted Scrap Metal @ May 19 2009, 02:30 AM)
We're talking a group.
*snip*
Either they're going to do a sarin gas attack on the subway, or they're a professional group who is about to cause some serious damage all around.
*snip*
Either they're going to do a sarin gas attack on the subway, or they're a professional group who is about to cause some serious damage all around.
Having just been to the movies and seen a certain trailer repeatedly, I guess the obvious response would have to be "CoooooooBRAAAAAAA!"
Wow, I can hear the crickets...
That was my point: to execute that sort simultaneous of multi-point attack against what are by any definition of the word "hardened facilities", with genuine surprise, we're getting out of small para-military units here. And those off-the-shelf missiles you're modifying may be obtainable, but they're kinda big. One off, that's big. Multiples gets a little nutzo. Saturation strikes from a minimum safe distance beyond range of short-range counter-battery fire and rapid-response units would call for either a LOT of medium sized vehicles or a couple mother huge launch platforms. Consider that the Chapparal SAM platform had a quad mount of Sidewinders, one of the LIGHTEST air-to-air weapons with a range of... well, in 2070 with modern propellants at low altitude with a functionally "motionless" starting platform, let's call it 25 km optimistically, and IT was mounted on a fragging M113 chassis. Said missile is only 5"/75mm in diameter and a paltry 21 pounds / 9.5kg of "payload". Now the Maverick AGM weighs in about three and a half times heavier, is designed for low altitude use, has a range of probably close to 40 km with 2070 fuels, is 12"/180mm in diameter carrying a 300 pound/140kg warhead in a late model. But that's a big heavy weapon again, so we're talking singletons dispersend on multiple networked platforms or a couple big mobile batteries. With a chemical agent, be it ever so potent, physics plays no favorites, and "volume" is a major consideration as much as "weight" for achieving a wide saturation patern with lethal concentrations.
Ok, now I'm starting to scare myself because ... oh, hell...
Good night, sleep tight, don't let the caustic blister enhanced nerve agents eat your flesh while your central nervous system decomposes.
QUOTE (Rusted Scrap Metal @ May 19 2009, 02:19 AM)
>>>>>[Extract needed ASAP. High End Runners only need apply. LTG: 555-35634]<<<<
--Rusted Scrap Metal <23:18:44/17-5-72>
--Rusted Scrap Metal <23:18:44/17-5-72>
(Edited to read 2072, I was a toddler in 2052)
>>>>>[Comcode: SCRAMBLED; Trace: FAILED]<<<<<
Decryption sequence: COMPLETE
[RSM, long time. I'm in.
Smash'n'grab, so Crystal will bring her toys...
Unless you want to try quiet like, then I will need more data.
Just gimmie Lat/Long and time.
You know how to reach me.
Kisses.]
--Kerenshara <23:28:03/17-5-72>
I am strongly reminded about the movie "Lord of War".
While it had political overtones you may or may not agree with, it did present a good general picture of what happens when a superpower balkanizes and falls into chaos.
The weapons stockpiles mysteriously start to disappear.
YURI: How many Kalashnikovs do you have?
DMITRI: 40,000.
YURI: Is that a "4"? It doesn't look like a "4" to me. It looks more like a "1". 10,000 Kalashnikovs for a battalion. Your
stocks are dangerously depleted, Dmitri. You should order more from the factory.
-karma
While it had political overtones you may or may not agree with, it did present a good general picture of what happens when a superpower balkanizes and falls into chaos.
The weapons stockpiles mysteriously start to disappear.
YURI: How many Kalashnikovs do you have?
DMITRI: 40,000.
YURI: Is that a "4"? It doesn't look like a "4" to me. It looks more like a "1". 10,000 Kalashnikovs for a battalion. Your
stocks are dangerously depleted, Dmitri. You should order more from the factory.
-karma
Children of the Bloody Path
Shadowland Briefing 2052
A terrorist group that started in South America in the later 2030's, supplied with arms and training by the Soviet Union until that nation's collapse, the Children of the Bloody Path were those who grew up in the war torn lands and grew to an adulthood with a burning hatred of authority and governments. They utilize a cell-like structure, with each leader of a cell belonging to a seperate cell, which leaders in turn belonged to another cell. In the Soviet DisUnion phase, the authorities of several countries moved to mop up the Children of the Bloody Path, only to find out that the group sported more than a few powerful toxic shamans.
By 2040, the group had abandoned their struggle to free their home countries from the grasp of governments they hated and the powerful megacorporations. While many believe that the loss of so many members crippled the group, the truth was that the survivors were battle hardened and the best of the best. Each survivor was tasked with building another cell, and encourage the best of those new cells to create new cells, in order to bring the strength of the group back up. Additionally, rather than scatter through a few towns and cities, the Children of the Bloody Path had gone global, hiding all around the world and using secure drops to communicate.
For the most part, the intelligence communities forgot about the Children of the Bloody Path, thinking of them as a shattered has-been, a relic of the Cold War and the Euro-Wars.
>>>>>Getting booooored....<<<<<
<Quickly Kid 15:41:13/8-15-2051>
>>>>>Pay attention, it's about to get good.<<<<<
<Chrome Wretch 15:42:59/8-15-2051>
In 2051 the Children of the Bloody Path emerged from hiding and into the shadows, hiring runners to gather certain supplies and snatch certain people. With Shadowrunners natural inclination to avoid researching too hard into an employer, it made it easy for the Children of the Bloody Path to begin massing the equipment they were after, including an old US Army MLRS vehicle that had been sitting in a decommissioning depot yard since the late 1990's. Additional runs secured several old MRLS H104 rocket pods, consisting of 6 11" rockets per pod.
>>>>>So what? They had some old crap. Those rockets would be nothing but junk.<<<<<
<Quickly Kid 15:44:23/8-15-2051>
>>>>>Isn't that mass of bone on top of your neck unweidly?<<<<<
<Chrome Wretch 15:46:33/8-15-2051>
Shadowland became alerted to this goings on with the following post on the Shadowland technical datahost.
>>>>>I've got a brain teaser for you... My employers have me kidnapping an old geezer who apparently used to be in the US military back before everything split apart. They just gave me a name, and when we did some digging, our decker found out that back in the bad old days, the old geezer was apparently something called an NBC Warfare Specialist and used to have government overwatch on him even after he got out. If that isn't strange enough, we heard that they'd grabbed some kind of old artillery vehicle and some old rounds for it. My question is, why would my patron want this old gray haired guy for, and what would he have to do with 2 barrels of toxic waste from the nuclear plant, a mobile milk pastuerization vehicle stolen from NAN, and a bunch of chemicals stolen from an SK clothing factory?<<<<<
<Zipperboots 16:32:15/4-4-51>
Curious, several members of Shadowland began to do some digging being the curious folk we are, and when the dust settled, it was Runners 17, Children of the Bloody Path 8. The vehicle was destroyed, several dozen gallons of chemical weapons were spilled into the ground, and the area was listed as a toxic dump site.
Bah, you get the idea.
First job:
Steal Milk pastuerization mobile unit from NAN.
Second job:
Steal chemicals being moved by truck to a clothing factory.
Third Job:
Steal old MRLS wagon, maybe not US Army one, I think there is one in Fields of Fire
Fourth Job:
Red Herring
Fifth Job:
Snatch on a street chemist who commonly makes a street drug.
Sixth Job:
Aquire old rockets for it.
Seventh Job:
Red Herring.
Eighth Job:
Buy modern missile systems
Ninth Job:
Kidnapped technician/Rigger
Tenth Job:
Red Herring
Eleventh Job:
Well, once again, you get the idea...
Imagine the player's look of horror when the launch covers rotate back, and they realize just what they've done...
Given a terrorist group who is perfectly willing to kill tens of thousand exactly what they need. They have an artillery vehicle with a real good range. Each rocket has been retrofitted, thanks to the players, so that instead of explosive bomblets, it has chemical munitions rounds with bursting charges. Finally, the bomblets have been soaked in the toxic nuclear waste for over 30 days.
Now the MLRS is sitting on a hill, overlooking Seattle, and is about to fire...
Whacha gonna do?
Shadowland Briefing 2052
A terrorist group that started in South America in the later 2030's, supplied with arms and training by the Soviet Union until that nation's collapse, the Children of the Bloody Path were those who grew up in the war torn lands and grew to an adulthood with a burning hatred of authority and governments. They utilize a cell-like structure, with each leader of a cell belonging to a seperate cell, which leaders in turn belonged to another cell. In the Soviet DisUnion phase, the authorities of several countries moved to mop up the Children of the Bloody Path, only to find out that the group sported more than a few powerful toxic shamans.
By 2040, the group had abandoned their struggle to free their home countries from the grasp of governments they hated and the powerful megacorporations. While many believe that the loss of so many members crippled the group, the truth was that the survivors were battle hardened and the best of the best. Each survivor was tasked with building another cell, and encourage the best of those new cells to create new cells, in order to bring the strength of the group back up. Additionally, rather than scatter through a few towns and cities, the Children of the Bloody Path had gone global, hiding all around the world and using secure drops to communicate.
For the most part, the intelligence communities forgot about the Children of the Bloody Path, thinking of them as a shattered has-been, a relic of the Cold War and the Euro-Wars.
>>>>>Getting booooored....<<<<<
<Quickly Kid 15:41:13/8-15-2051>
>>>>>Pay attention, it's about to get good.<<<<<
<Chrome Wretch 15:42:59/8-15-2051>
In 2051 the Children of the Bloody Path emerged from hiding and into the shadows, hiring runners to gather certain supplies and snatch certain people. With Shadowrunners natural inclination to avoid researching too hard into an employer, it made it easy for the Children of the Bloody Path to begin massing the equipment they were after, including an old US Army MLRS vehicle that had been sitting in a decommissioning depot yard since the late 1990's. Additional runs secured several old MRLS H104 rocket pods, consisting of 6 11" rockets per pod.
>>>>>So what? They had some old crap. Those rockets would be nothing but junk.<<<<<
<Quickly Kid 15:44:23/8-15-2051>
>>>>>Isn't that mass of bone on top of your neck unweidly?<<<<<
<Chrome Wretch 15:46:33/8-15-2051>
Shadowland became alerted to this goings on with the following post on the Shadowland technical datahost.
>>>>>I've got a brain teaser for you... My employers have me kidnapping an old geezer who apparently used to be in the US military back before everything split apart. They just gave me a name, and when we did some digging, our decker found out that back in the bad old days, the old geezer was apparently something called an NBC Warfare Specialist and used to have government overwatch on him even after he got out. If that isn't strange enough, we heard that they'd grabbed some kind of old artillery vehicle and some old rounds for it. My question is, why would my patron want this old gray haired guy for, and what would he have to do with 2 barrels of toxic waste from the nuclear plant, a mobile milk pastuerization vehicle stolen from NAN, and a bunch of chemicals stolen from an SK clothing factory?<<<<<
<Zipperboots 16:32:15/4-4-51>
Curious, several members of Shadowland began to do some digging being the curious folk we are, and when the dust settled, it was Runners 17, Children of the Bloody Path 8. The vehicle was destroyed, several dozen gallons of chemical weapons were spilled into the ground, and the area was listed as a toxic dump site.
Bah, you get the idea.
First job:
Steal Milk pastuerization mobile unit from NAN.
Second job:
Steal chemicals being moved by truck to a clothing factory.
Third Job:
Steal old MRLS wagon, maybe not US Army one, I think there is one in Fields of Fire
Fourth Job:
Red Herring
Fifth Job:
Snatch on a street chemist who commonly makes a street drug.
Sixth Job:
Aquire old rockets for it.
Seventh Job:
Red Herring.
Eighth Job:
Buy modern missile systems
Ninth Job:
Kidnapped technician/Rigger
Tenth Job:
Red Herring
Eleventh Job:
Well, once again, you get the idea...
Imagine the player's look of horror when the launch covers rotate back, and they realize just what they've done...
Given a terrorist group who is perfectly willing to kill tens of thousand exactly what they need. They have an artillery vehicle with a real good range. Each rocket has been retrofitted, thanks to the players, so that instead of explosive bomblets, it has chemical munitions rounds with bursting charges. Finally, the bomblets have been soaked in the toxic nuclear waste for over 30 days.
Now the MLRS is sitting on a hill, overlooking Seattle, and is about to fire...
Whacha gonna do?
I would sit on stockpiles of food with low saltine content. That way when the apocalypse comes I can start a new corporation on the proceeds.
Seriously if the CEOs of AAAs have MAD effects triggered by their death and I would be a bit more of a nihilist I would go and drop an NLOS on the flight path of the CEO. I am sure 15 missiles are enough to take out the plane.
Seriously if the CEOs of AAAs have MAD effects triggered by their death and I would be a bit more of a nihilist I would go and drop an NLOS on the flight path of the CEO. I am sure 15 missiles are enough to take out the plane.
QUOTE (Rusted Scrap Metal @ May 19 2009, 05:04 PM)
Whacha gonna do?
Well, if you've GOT the mother huge MLRS, and you refitted guidance packages to ensure proper primary dispersal and fixed up the warheads for broader pattern...
I get inside my lead-lined box with canned air, food and water for 30 days and pray like heck the cavalry can decon the place before it runs out while I play solataire.
You SERIOUSLY know how to improve the sales of TummsTM, don't you?
QUOTE (Kerenshara @ May 19 2009, 04:01 PM)
Well, if you've GOT the mother huge MLRS, and you refitted guidance packages to ensure proper primary dispersal and fixed up the warheads for broader pattern...
I get inside my lead-lined box with canned air, food and water for 30 days and pray like heck the cavalry can decon the place before it runs out while I play solataire.
You SERIOUSLY know how to improve the sales of TummsTM, don't you?
I get inside my lead-lined box with canned air, food and water for 30 days and pray like heck the cavalry can decon the place before it runs out while I play solataire.
You SERIOUSLY know how to improve the sales of TummsTM, don't you?
Heh. That's without even shifting into professional paranoia.
And the MRLS wagon isn't even that big. Let's see, if I remember right, it was a 2 6-pack pod system, HEMMIT front chassis, a little larger than a semi-truck. Mother huge by normal standards, but still, not that hard. The big thing is... well... we might want to get into specifics. Suffice to say, that a Rigger mechanic with access to basic parts, some technical schematics, and some other stuff, and a MRLS wagon could be manufactured.
I can even think of how the warhead submunition pattern could be broader right off the top of my head. Probably with double bursting charge and airfoil... Hmmm... it wouldn't be that hard in the SR universe.Remember, in the SR universe, the Soviet Union didn't collapse until the 2030's. Think of the steady progression in the NBC-R field, as well as the dispersal of the storage and manufacture areas (which was done during the Cold War for specific reasons) across wide areas.
Now, remember that the Crash went after high security databases (some believe that the Crash was caused by a mutating dog-brain attack MAD program set) and think of what military databases are. Don't be fooled, the data on the locations, not the mention the inventories and all that great stuff, involved in a hotloaded FSTS or ASP is classified at least Secret, and often moves into Top Secret or TS-SSBI real quickly.
Then combine that with the split up of the nations, and the Ghost Dance. How much stuff got lost? How much stuff was put under volcanic ash and never recovered.
Also, you have a lot of people with a general piss-off, you have medical technology able to permit street docs to perform high end implantation surgery in a hotel room, you have a proliferation of weapons and equipment out there.
If you want a Shadowrun mission involving NBC-R weaponry, I could give you ten scenarios in less than hour.
Everything from a chemical weapon attack like in the posting above, or a enriched fuel rod incandescence radiological attack on an enclosed area, or a biological attack across a certain vector to allow a Corp to move in and take over.
QUOTE (Rusted Scrap Metal @ May 19 2009, 09:40 PM)
Heh. That's without even shifting into professional paranoia.
*snip*
If you want a Shadowrun mission involving NBC-R weaponry, I could give you ten scenarios in less than hour.
Everything from a chemical weapon attack like in the posting above, or a enriched fuel rod incandescence radiological attack on an enclosed area, or a biological attack across a certain vector to allow a Corp to move in and take over.
*snip*
If you want a Shadowrun mission involving NBC-R weaponry, I could give you ten scenarios in less than hour.
Everything from a chemical weapon attack like in the posting above, or a enriched fuel rod incandescence radiological attack on an enclosed area, or a biological attack across a certain vector to allow a Corp to move in and take over.
Actually, the MLRS was built off the M2 Bradley chassis - it's literally a tank. Call it 25 tons.
But I guess the point always has been that the 2070s chemicals and ESPECIALLY biologicals would make the old stuff pale. And like I mentioned, especially against the old biologicals, 2070s OTC antiviral and antibiotics would be like ThlenolTM for a flu. No doubt with 2070s tech it's doable, and not actually that hard to pull off a very large scale attack. But there'd be little point in raiding the old stashes to do it.
The exception of course is the fisionables in the nukes. Uranium 235 is a cast iron bitch to separate. And plutonium, while easier, requires some high level (as in LARGE) gear. But if you recycled a bunch of old pits and casings (Depleted Uranium, useful for the high yield hybrid devices, but that's separate) you could reprocess and remanufacture tha hard parts. The rest of the bits are the equivalent of Radio Shack by 2070. And commercial explosives by then are precise enough to handle the implosive first stage trigger. Three shakes later and you're in business. THAT's something that could be highly dangerous, especially if there were old schematics to explain the REALLY advanced stuff (like the W88) to the neophyte wannabe supervillain.
OK, THERE is a scarry (and plot twisting) shadowrun. Prime runners, only, please.
QUOTE (Kerenshara @ May 19 2009, 08:52 PM)
Actually, the MLRS was built off the M2 Bradley chassis - it's literally a tank. Call it 25 tons.
Was it? It's been almost 20 years since I've seen ones, and I'll admit, I was exhausted the last time I saw one, and only wanted a shower, some time in the bunk, and some stitches checked.
QUOTE
But I guess the point always has been that the 2070s chemicals and ESPECIALLY biologicals would make the old stuff pale. And like I mentioned, especially against the old biologicals, 2070s OTC antiviral and antibiotics would be like ThlenolTM for a flu. No doubt with 2070s tech it's doable, and not actually that hard to pull off a very large scale attack. But there'd be little point in raiding the old stashes to do it.
The most important part of the old stashes, from our wannabe supervillain's point of view, is the simple schematics that he can get out of pulling everything apart.
I know that it isn't as simple to make a dispersion device as I've deliberately made it sound.
Then again, don't knock all the pre-Crash stuff. I can't remember which book it was, Sly was one of the characters and it involved a piece of technology from Pre-Crash that would allow someone to read and alter data coming down a fiber optic cable. It was mentioned that while most of the stuff in those databases were replicated and redone, not everything was replicated. There was talk about the fiber-optic reading/writing system, some stuff involving vehicles, encryption stuff.
So it isn't entirely out of canon for something interesting to show up in an old log some where, that our would-be supervillain finds, and sends his minions to recover something very very very nasty that the Corps had all given up on or didn't even think of researching, but there it sits somewhere, in the dark, waiting.
QUOTE
The exception of course is the fisionables in the nukes. Uranium 235 is a cast iron bitch to separate. And plutonium, while easier, requires some high level (as in LARGE) gear. But if you recycled a bunch of old pits and casings (Depleted Uranium, useful for the high yield hybrid devices, but that's separate) you could reprocess and remanufacture tha hard parts. The rest of the bits are the equivalent of Radio Shack by 2070. And commercial explosives by then are precise enough to handle the implosive first stage trigger. Three shakes later and you're in business. THAT's something that could be highly dangerous, especially if there were old schematics to explain the REALLY advanced stuff (like the W88) to the neophyte wannabe supervillain.
OK, THERE is a scarry (and plot twisting) shadowrun. Prime runners, only, please.
OK, THERE is a scarry (and plot twisting) shadowrun. Prime runners, only, please.
They're pretty good runs. Yeah, I've been a part of them back in SRI and SRII, as well as GM'd them for other systems.
Mix in some toxic shamans rarely, and you've got some nasty stuff.
Where is all this stuff about "the glass desert" and Israel, and other nukes, what's this about? I dont remember ever reading about that, is it in a supplement? Is it in another book?
SR is 20 years old, there's stuff some of us cite from 1st ed. that is sort of accepted in the cannon even if they forgot to write it into the 4.a ed.
For some real fun, pick up Native American Nations II and check out the adventure in the beginning of it.
QUOTE (Byron @ May 22 2009, 09:24 PM)
Where is all this stuff about "the glass desert" and Israel, and other nukes, what's this about? I dont remember ever reading about that, is it in a supplement? Is it in another book?
It's in the timeline, and was mentioned whenever the Desert Wars comes up, also in Year of the Comet, Shadows of Asia, and SOTA 2064
EDIT: whoops, missed a big section on it in Target: Wastelands
by the way;
NO ONE uses salted bombs. no one has ever built one. no group with an ounce of sanity ever will. those who do will have infamy forever. their names will become a curse.
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