In the ghoul thread, the discussion went along the lines of how the virulency has been increased exponentially in the new rules.

It got me thinking, why haven't we heard more about HMHVV as a bioweapon? I know the Ordo Maximus were investigating all sorts of insidious uses of the stuff and I could easily see them supporting a private enterprise or working in conjunction with some foreign military or megacorp on perfecting it as a weapon. This was back in SR2 days.

I'm wondering now that its some 15 years on, with increased virulency, why we haven't heard anything more about it being employed?

Discuss.

- J.

Because they simply didn´t realize what they kicked off with this apparently small change of the rules?

You missed the point.

This was considered back in SR2 days (read Threats and look up the chapter on the Ordo Maximus).

- J.

If we're going to use poor rules to change the parameters of the in-game setting, we have to accept that traffic fatalities in the 2070s are vastly more common even in low-speed impacts. However, since most of us realize how idiotic thaqt would be, we ignore it. Soon enough, the zombie-plague rules-fuck will be ignored and it'll go back to any number of houseruled solutions. Which is how it should be...

Let me rephrase - perhaps you should refrain from posting if you haven't read Threats.

Without people having any familiarity with the Ordo, then this thread is pointless.

- J.

Your first line took us to the point about 4e HMHVV. That's much more of a hot topic right now than the Ordo, which was never too popular in any game I've seen as vampire consiracies are way overdone. Now intelligent ghoul conspiriacies...

Even if we assume Kreiger is spread via Injection as any sane GM would rule it, whats to say someone doesn't come up with a genetically modified variant or a chemical-based delivery system which makes the virus Contact based?

It's just so evil I am really suprised that no government or mega hasn't tried playing with fire to see what they could come up with.

- J.

Well if you were considering putting something like this in the game, step 1 would be considering whether your players can be trusted not to mess up and either accidentally or wilfully let the plague loose and obliterate the campaign world. No-one has ever reached stage 2.

Sorry - a point made humorously, but serious nonetheless. If you're doing HMHVVIII by RAW, then such a plague would be a world changer. How would you even use such a weapon? Aside from inviting maximum retaliation just for raising the possibility of using it, you'd have to convince your targets that you were actually willing to use it. That would mean any of the following: (a) not being concerned about the consequences - e.g. you're already ghouls and don't care about civil collapse because you're ghoul survivalists; (b) have a way of protecting yourself, e.g. you've developed a vaccine and have stockpiles for you and your friends; © Are crazy.

Actually, I'm going to partially retract the above. With stakes this high, few people would be willing to call your bluff. But certainly the above are things you should consider. Now I have, I'm afraid, not read Threats I, though I have a passing familiarity with the Ordo Maximus. I wasn't aware that their aims were destruction, but were more about power and control. A weaponised form of HMHVVIII is great for the former, but I'm not sure its good for the latter. It's a Do or Don't weapon with very limited ability to partially deploy. If you have a very good degree of control over it, then maybe you could provide demonstrations - e.g. spray a particular city and watch as everyone there turns into a non-contagious ghoul. But you're asking for a lot of certainty there. And this also raises another point. How exactly do you demonstrate that you can do what you threaten you can do? This will be a requirement for using this weapon as a threat. And you'll have to be good to do it without letting yourself be traced. Of course if your aim really is just destruction, then there's little anyone can do to stop you if you have the expertise and resource. The source material for research is easily available (ghouls are everywhere). Anyone with the expertise to weaponise the virus is probably either working in or could work in an environment where they can obtain the necessary equipment without raising alarm bells with authorities. Basically, with HMHVVIII as written, if it could be made airborne or introduced to water supplies, etc, you're looking at an "I Am Legend" scenario with slim chances of anyone being able to stop it.

Of course you have to consider that its a weapon that, whilst causing the collapse of a country, does turn said population into dual-natured super-soldiers. Is that a desirable thing is a question that has to be asked.

K.

And the strain you would go for maximum terror is HMHVV II anyway - just that's not what the Ordo Maximus would want.

It was all speculation but it was theorised the Ordo would do it to increase the number of Infected - meaning more people would share their goals (at least, that I was assume was the theory).

Or create genetically modified variants of HMHVV - e.g. vampires without a sunlight vulnerability.

I just like wondering what someone could do if they chose to carpetbomb an entire country with Kreiger and then just sit back and then kill the ghouls as they try to escape.

- J.

there is already, DMSO and infected body fluid

Do I smell Resident Evil?
I think that a selfpropagating, selfwilled bioweapon is damn too likely to go out of control and that it takes a serious moron to do a such thing, the reaction would be a scrotched earth approach and an open war on the infected; it's much more effective to infect a few selected individual in key positions, after all the masses are there as work force/food stack, it's only those with power that need to be converted.

And by the way, Shedims make better zombies.

hi hi

I ran a campaign a little while back where I tried to replicate some of the themes from Bug City by releasing a "new" strain of HMHVV on New Seattle and having it be quarantined off. It would definitely be a world changer, but that was kind of the point. (I made secret blind fire checks whenever they were around people coughing or sneezing to see if they'd get exposed)

If someone wanted to mix ghoul blood plasma into a sustaining suspension along with DMSO, they could secretly attach sprayers (much like crop dusters) onto commuter jets and blanket most of the entire city with the disease. Another vector would be if someone was able to get into an important position in the Soycaff manufacturing plant and start mixing a little something extra into the drink.

In a place like Seattle anyway, the corps wouldn't firebomb the place because they still want to recover their valuable assets. They'd just wait until the plague starves itself off, maybe release some bio-weapons of their own to kill the ghouls.

Because no one sane would use a bioweapon he can't stop from 'killing' his own people? The whole point in biowarfare is stopping it at your own front-line.

Probably FABIII, Ghouls are dual natured after all.

I would argue that weaponizing HMHVV would require the kind of resources only the governtments and megacorps possess. Thier interest as far as bioweapons would be military and from a military perspective (corporate or national) it makes no sense to develop a weapon that makes your enemy scarier, more powerful and harder to deal with.

It also makes them DEAD when combined with FAB.

hmm, super soldier, infected troll, with a implant FABIII, just in case...

I think this sums it up.

So does phosgene or VX or any number of other agents at a fraction of the cost.

Zero Punctuation is the siz Draco. Love their Fallout 3 review.

"Siz"? Not a slang term which which I am familiar.

It is the shit. It is a way to say it without actually saying it.

ye gods...

True, but the other agents don't turn the population into flesh eating zombies to continue the spread before the FAB kills them.

hi hi

I can imagine there might be some other goals for releasing HMHVV, other then just massive and widespread death. Ghouls tired of living at the fringes of society might be one, a terrorist organization that wants to spread fear and chaos more then death is another. Infection is also a good way to make a government kill it's own people.

Good point, but there better ways for the groups you've mentioned to achieve their goals than taking the time to weaponize the virus.

Ever look at how much agent you need to deploy for large scale effectiveness? For most chemicals it's measured in tons per km^2.

Not if diplomatic channels have failed...extremists such as the Ghoul Liberation Front might...

- J.

Again I would ask where these fringe groups would get the technology and resources to weaponize it? You're talking about genetically altering a magical virus without un-magic-ing it. That seems to me like it would be a monumental task, even with 2070's level technology.

But if you're going to rely on horizontal spread why bother to weaponize it? And I should note there are plenty of mundane biowarfare agents that would also be considerably cheeper.

hi hi

As it is currently written in the rules, the virus really doesn't need to be weaponized, it's already on par with Ebola Plus. The difference between diseases and chemical compounds is that everyone that is infected turns into a factory and vector for more of the disease. Someone could just go around wiping their nose and then touching commonly touched objects in public places all day long.

I think thats what I just said....


Yep.

hi hi

What I had originally meant by having it sprayed in the air was that it would make tracing the point of origin more difficult for authorities, not that it would infect everyone from initial application. I guess that was my bad on being bad at explaining myself.

If you want to weaponise HMHVVIII, make it less effective. A ten day transformation period means visible symptoms must appear immediately and there's still a chance of quarantining affected areas. What you want to do is make it a bit less rapid-onset and then it becomes even worse.

Also find a strain that doesn't turn the victims into super soldiers.

At the risk of repeating others, HMHVVIII is unattractive as a bioweapon for the same reason bioweapons are generally unattractive: it's very hard not to infect your own population, and just possession of such a weapon makes you unpopular diplomatically.

Additionally, turning the enemy into an army of superstrong, supertough cannibals is probably a bad strategic decision. If you're determined to use a bioweapon, why not just use one that kills people?

Besides that, in post information age warfare, killing huge numbers of people is a militarily inefficient and potentially diplomatically disastrous strategy. You attack the enemy's command and control centers, and then his military assets. There's no need to carpet bomb.

It's really easy: add HMHVV to a Slab splash grenade. Fin.

The point isn't that your making the enemy into super soldiers; you're making the enemy (ideally) into crazed super soldiers. You're hoping the pain of the transformation will make them feral.

You see America? You see what you've done? With your media sanitization and over-parenting? You've created a generation that avoids the word "shit"! Now you realise, too late, where your path has led you!

Becuase that can't possibly go wrong.

I'm not saying it wouldn't go wrong, just that that is the aim of such things.

Actually I'm an old grumpy military nco. I've been trying to cut down on my cursing because, really, I do it way to much. When you can talk for ten minutes and 75% of the words out of your mouth are profanity then it is time to cut back.

Neraph:

Creating a horde of hundreds of thousands of mad, feral, uncontrolled ghouls doesn't seem like the solution to a problem to me. Maybe if you're ghoul supremacists, yes...but how many ghoul supremacists have the laboratories to manufacture whole new bioweapons?

That's good too. I was just aiming for humour. I should be the last person who ever tells anyone how they should talk.

K.

Actually, since this thread is about weaponizing HMHVV, I figured that pretty much solved the "problem" (that being actually weaponizing HMHVV). This is not a thread about curing HMHVV, but using it as a weapon.

EDIT: It should be noted that feral ghouls are feral. They cannot attack flying drones efficiently, nor can they easily overrun an Ares Citymaster that has 3 GM Light Autocannons mounted on it. The point of weaponizing HMHVV is to have the ghouls you just made destroy the enemies soldiers, then you move in and mop up the ghouls.

Who said anything about curing HMHVVIII?

So the idea is that you infect, for example, 25% of the enemy, making them into ghouls, who then turn on the remaining enemy troops? But as you point out, ghouls aren't very good at fighting aircraft and armored vehicles. But ghouls do have at minimum animal intelligence, and therefore will probably avoid armored vehicles, at the very least because AFVs aren't good to eat. What would probably happen is that many of the ghouls would go underground. Yes, they would become a problem for your enemy, but if you intend to move into your enemy's real estate, the ghouls will become a problem for you, too.

If you're not concerned with the diplomatic or ethical consequences of using biological or chemical weapons, why not just use Ebola Plus (AUG 134), or White Star (ARS 84), and do the damage much more quickly and reliably, without having to develop a whole new weapon?

Glad to see I'm not alone here. This is exactly my point.

Furthermore, many of the new ghouls who retain Sapience might also retain that nationalist loyalty that put them in the armed forces in the first place. Now, even more angry at you, their enemy, they're signing up for training as insurgents, to be inserted behind your own lines.

The Jake, sure, but as it has been pointed out, the Fringe Ghouls probably don't have the resources to "weaponize" the virus, but more importantly, they don't have to, all they have to do to randomly attack crowds of people or pour blood into the food/water supply.

And for the people who talk about handling the Ghouls afterwards, well that is why you always follow up with FAB, as dual natured beings Ghouls have no defense whatsoever and will be dead soon enough.

And when they hit 100% the will have a look at your own people and think: Tasty