We all know that the sixth world has seen a multitude of ecological disasters, ranging from relatively to small to completely devastating. Most of them have at least been exacerbated by metahuman activity, if they were not already a direct result of it. Either way, the last 200 years or so has left a lot of fun stuff out in the open: dioxins, aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, and various radioactive materials including fallout from however many nuclear "events" there have been since the mid-1940s.

It strikes me that at least a few people would care enough to concern themselves with making contaminated areas fit for habitation again, and that there are sufficient technological as well as magical means for effecting quicker and more complete clean-up operations. (I wouldn't quite expect anything nearly as good as the "Japanese Miracle" nano-machines of Ghost In the Shell: Standalone Complex fame, but then again, I may be surprised.) It's probably safe to assume that by the 2070s, we've at the very least made some advances in the "scoop up the contaminated materials and dump them somewhere secure" (or "somewhere else") area. Magic opens up some interesting opportunities for the removal of hazardous materials, but I can't seem to find any specific references to this- perhaps corporate mages are given tasks of a higher priority on the corporate scale, and independent mages are only be capable of cleaning up very small areas.

So the [regrettably] post-cyberpunk question is this: considering the opportunities available, what would you imagine metahumanity's gross capacity to be in regard to removing these materials? How much is possible with a concerted effort?

High powered spirits. With favors. Hell, that might be why the Dunkie Foundation wants to get so many Toxic Shaman; they might be "retraining" them as HazMat cleanup crews, using their spirits as more effective manipulators of HazMat spills.

I was under the impression that the Draco Foundation wanted those toxic shamans dead.

Outstanding bounty for live.

Emphasis added.

I suppose anything is possible, but I think toxic shamans are so twisted and so far gone it'd be impossible to retrain them to clean up toxic areas.

Toxic shamans and their spirits were expressly used to do just that in Double Exposure. They gained toxic power by absorbing the "yuck." Yes, in my world, toxicity is measured in "yucks".

I always imagined disaster cleanup in Shadowrun as involving huge bulldozers pushing the SINless into oil spills, radioactive waste, etc. Because orks are extra-absorbant!

Toxic shamans and their spirits were expressly used to do just that in Double Exposure. They gained toxic power by absorbing the "yuck." Yes, in my world, toxicity is measured in "yucks".

I always imagined disaster cleanup in Shadowrun as involving huge bulldozers pushing the SINless into oil spills, radioactive waste, etc. Because orks are extra-absorbant!

Is there a book telling the history of 6th World's South America (specially the Amazonia "kingdom")?
I'm almost sure that Hualpa and the indigenous people used pretty heavy magic to make the forest grow back. (As far as I could understand, the Amazonian Rain Forest was completely recovered along with the Pantanal, the Brazilian Highlands' cerrado and the Brazilian coast's original woods (leaving the only urban sprawl on what it used to be the brazilian nation, the area of Rio de Janeiro - São Paulo).

When it comes to toxic waste, it's always out of sight, out of mind. If they could dump it on the astral or even on the moon, that'd be great for them. Then again, some corp could keep their toxic storage in a bad part of town to watch the effects of toxicity on metahumans.

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I didn't have a copy of Dunkie's will handy.

Wow. Thanks for all the replies. Didn't think this could incite such a discussion.

Hmm... using toxic shamans for cleanup... there's something that never occurred to me. And it sounds like exactly the sort of thing the Draco Foundation would do.

It sounds like a stretch, but would that still work for radioactive fallout and the uncountable fragments of those many, many depleted uranium rounds?

Doesn't radiation cause a "background count" that keepsw most spirits at bay? The other angle that folks havn't brought up is drones. There's one specifically detailed in arsenal but autonomous or semi-autonomous drones could decon sites much safer and cheaper then metahumans in like levels of hazmat gear operating more or less constantly for days if not weeks on end to gather or neutralize dangerous materials and top soil. Nanites raise possibilities for deontamination of waste material as do things like orbital lasers.

In my Hamburg campaign, I've created a group of mages (called Sauberei, I'm not sure if the pun works as intended) who try to clean the city and its surrounding with magic. Some of its members, fed up of cleaning places that got polluted right after, created another group called Black Tide.

Black Tide is mostly made of toxic mages: they pretend that they sacrifice themselves by attuning themselves to the toxic environment so that they can get more power to clean and act against the polluters. When a Black Tide mage is on the verge of becoming a danger to his friends or the environment, other Black Tide members are expected to kill him. Even if Black Tide looks like a dangerous organization, it has so far been more helpful than Sauberei both in their legal and illegal activities and their vision is more practical than Sauberei's borderline Luddite discourse.

The ecological disasters, and the perpetuation of them by Corporations and groups like Greenwar (There's some irony for you) is a major concern for magicians of most strains that aren't completely mercenary. It adjusts the Manasphere away from neutral (Or away from whatever type of magic they work themselves), thus decreasing their power.

For a good example of this, check out Chicago and how the Manaplanes are described there in Feral Cities. FAB III was bad for you and me!

Although, that would make for one hell of a weird Shadowrun, stealing barrels of toxic waste from The Rats Nest to lower the power of a Toxic Rat Shaman in his domain...

Technology-wise, there's not a huge amount. The people who have the technology got it by polluting, and realize that same pollution creates a market for their very many products (nothing sells your hydroponic tomatoes faster than drowning every backyard garden and family farm in acid rain). So by and large, the people with tech not only have no interest in cleaning up, they have a precise business interest to make more pollution (the exception being PR firms like Horizon, who have an interest in having people in colorful suits make very visible, but relatively inexpensive geological changes and saying it's clean-up).

However, magic falls on all classes equally, and thusly in Shadowrun, it's almost always been magic, not technology, which has been used to fight the pollution of technology (oh yeah, and because magic is happy puppies and technology is the selling of one's soul, hence why cyberware eats essence). The elves did it in the Tir, the Native Americans did it in the NAN, and 'toxic avenger' type toxic shamans do it pretty regularly where ever they are (or just break stuff in blind fury, but it's almost the same). The problem is, the magic seems to be pretty expensive. I believe the Native Americans fed it its own people during the Great Ghost Dance, and the snooty elves used snooty elf magic (which requires a significant sacrifice of valuable snoot).

Yes, but logically it would not apply to toxic, and especially radiation elementals. My group has dealt with this. And by deal with, I mean got pwned in the face. They went to Chicago to track down a Rad mage for the 1 mil bounty, and ended up finding him in a hospital who's nuclear reactor was leaking (BC 4). The mage was Posession with Channeling, and had the Taint Metamagic. After about 1 Combat Turn, they tried to talk it over with the guy and leave. Almost got away before the sniper put a Slab Capsule round on him; dealt no damage, but knocked out the vessel and pissed off the spirit.


Saeder-Krupp Schildekrote.

You have made me giggle.