Depends on the country. Look at how North Korea responded to having "It's" water being hit with artillery shells. After being warned.

No.. not really. There's a massive massive difference between "There was a missile fired" and "A major city was nuked out of the blue by a foreign power"

You'll note that there was no bright flash 30 minutes after launch. IIRC, nobody even reported that they found the RVs.

Ares largely owns the UCAS, they get away with a lot more then a German speaking overgrown lizard. Plus the hive WAS a huge threat.

IIRC, the lone eagle missile was part of an effort deliberately calculated to start a global nuclear war. Which suggests that they didn't expect the USSR to respond by requesting anyone extradited.

Highly debatable. It depends a lot on the authors and books you want to quote (or, in the end, whoever is the gamemaster at the precise moment).

According to Corporate Download, and Corporate Guide, it's the country who did not sign the 2042 Corporate Court-proposed Business Recognition Accords (establishing an international standard on corporate extraterritoriality) than can be counted on one hand. And UCAS is not among them. Actually, CAS and Pueblo signed the BRA as well and still have tougher regulations on extraterritoriality than the default Seattle, UCAS setting.

On the other hand, by 2050 (Seattle sourcebook), the FBI was willing to investigate on Federated-Boeing involvement in a coup d'état in Malaysia, while it was unsure if the Everett Naval Station commander could refuse Aztechnology or Mitsuhama ships to dock in. In 2059, the UCAS armed forces took control of the arcology crisis without Renraku consent.

Then, in 2058, Damien Knight came to Washington to warn his old friend Kyle Haeffner that Ares troops were pulling out of the Chicago wall... 24 hours in advance. And there was nothing Haeffner could do except an emergency meeting with the chiefs of staff. And the unnamed president that won the election in 2065 was "nothing but a tool of the corps during his entire term."

So, if tomorrow morning, no matter how unlikely, Irish terrorists take over a Royal Navy submarine and launch a nuke on Boston, it would "the thing to do" for the US to bomb London and hunt for David Cameron and the Queen ?

It wouldn't that far-fetched. Rather than just manufaturing weapons, I would expect Ares Macrotechnology to be first and foremost the largest defense contractor, replacing IRL corporations like KBR, SAIC, MPRI, Dyncorp, Blackwater/Xe and the likes. Nowadays, the US cannot fire a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone without a dozen of contractors in the control room. With the NASA sold out, I think any Thor shot capacity the UCAS may have would rely on Ares employees. This is Shadowrun, so, yes, I can imagine a contracted corporate strike team carrying a nuclear weapon. However, as far as I remember, Ares was acting alone on Cermak operation (with Dunkelzahn providing Ares intel about bug spirits the UCAS government did not have).

(It worth noting that older SR books set in 2054, Fields of Fire and Corporate Shadowfiles, Knight Errant was just building security and cops, Ares Arms had military troops, and mercenary outfits were semi-legal independant organization. It's only in Corporate Download in 2061 that KE really showed up as a paramilitary force.)

Kzt, there's a thing a find odd in your version : basically as you present things, the UCAS would go straigth for an all-our war. Of the 'nothing's negotiable it's a war to complete destruction and the only word we'll accept to listen for you are unconditionnal surrender'. IRL, there was a diplomatic round with the Talibans before the military operations, even if those guys where neither powerfull nor reputable. Gulf War 1 also had a diplomatic first round.

While I could understand that toward a North Korea style problem child with a record of reneging on deals, SK on the other hand is definitively a respectable world citizen, who's known for respecting his end of deals and the like. Which makes the complete refusal of even listening what the lizard has to say about the incident somewhat odd.

In my opinion it would be more normal to intiate a round of negociation 'wtf happened and what kind of reparations are you planning', using the time to ramp up the military and then go to an active confrontation if the propositions aren't good enough and SK won't budge.

My opinion is that Ares has hugely more military force than the UCAS. My impression is that worldwide it's Ares, Japan, Azatlan+Aztechnology, SK. In terms of orbital asets Ares, Japan + Japancorps, SK.

The fact that they are roughly equal is a really good reason for Ares to immediately take down everything it can get to that belongs to SK once they realize that either SK has lost control of enormously destructive major military assets that are currently attacking Ares or someone jumped the gun in a planned massive attack.

If Boston gets nuked, Ares loses some money; presumably they have assets in the area.

If S-K gets gutted, the worldwide economy collapses, and Ares loses vastly more.




Sure, eventually, Ares might take over some S-K leftovers, but all the other corporations will be scrambling for it too. But it'd be Ares paying the price (dealing with S-K) for all of them: insanely expensive.

Seriously, trying to neutralize a corporation that resembles Goldman Sachs, OPEC, Microsoft, the German heavy industrial and military-industrial complex and Sauron rolled into one. Spread around the entire world and with more doomsday devices than anyone can hope to know about. That's insanely expensive.

Also, all the secret S-K sleeper agents (including magical doppelgangers, magical manchurian candidates and so forth) inside Ares would sabotage it.

---

Of course, Ares has enough internal power struggles between the stockholders to complicate this even without external machinations coming into play.

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And the of course, the kind of military readiness you'd need to be able to launch instant worldwide attacks is so expensive that the shareholders would never agree with the damage it did to the bottom line.

---

Besides. It's Boston, not Ares that was nuked. Why get involved? Much more (safer, easier) profit in manipulating CC procedures to extort concessions from S-K.

No, it's an extraterritorial company. The Ares offices that got blown up ARE Ares. It's a direct attack on Ares.

Does Ares have any special offices in Boston?

I mean, I'm sure they have some facilities there, because they're all over the place. But they're just collateral damage, they weren't the target or anything.

Overreacting is bad for business.

Again, debatable.

According to Shadows of North America, the CAS have the largest force in North America, with 6 active Army divisions, 2 Marine expeditionary forces and 16 air combat squadrons, and 2 air carriers, and the largest submarine force in the world. That's roughly two-third of the US Army, USMC and USAF current strength, and a fifth of the US Navy, which would put the total number around 750,000 active personnel. Little information is available on the UCAS, but I wouldn't expect them to have less than half of the CAS numbers, at least for symbolical reasons.

I pass upon Corporate Shadowfiles, which have the largest corporate permanent military force regiment-sized, with several of the AAA having none at all.
According to Aztlan and Corporate Download, Aztlan armed forces only numbers 50,000, and Aztechnology Corporate Security, mixing security and military troops, 150,000 worldwide. Such numbers seem quite low however.
Another number, from Germany Sourcebook, has MET2000 providing work to "thousands" of men and women. Though Matador, in Fields of Fire described the published numbers as "grossly inflated".

During Year of the Comet, Ares Macrotechnology had 5 battalions, 2,500 personnel in Silicon Valley, which was described as "pretty large" for a corporate presence. A large part was actually fielded through some contingency plan having Ares Arms equipping Knight Errant security personnel.

According to SOTA:2064, only Saeder-Krupp, Ares Macrotechnology and Mitsuhama have significant nuke stockpile (MCT acting more or less as a proxy for Japan). According to Target: Wastelands, only Ares and S-K have Thor shots "for sure". Fuchi Industrial Electronics only had two, which were seemingly lost during the break-up (one decommissioned and one knocked off out of orbit).

That is like saying that an American Embassy IS America. It is not. It is a holding OF America. Completely different things all together. Extra-Territoriality is nice, but it does not give an excuse to promulgate Nuclear Exchanges between Independant entities.

If a City in Germany gets wasted, America is not likely to throw a fit beacuuse their Embassy was also destroyed. There WILL be negotiations before any war stance is even considered...

Same goes for Ares and Boston.

Actually an American Embassy ___IS___ US soil. That's the thing. They ARE.. and if you attack an US Embassy it CAN be attributed to an act of war. It's why if you're in another country and getting chased by the cops or something and you run through the gates of that American Embassy, those Marines at the gates will repel attackers, up to and including shooting them frakin' DEAD if they try and force their way in. (( they wouldn't. They'd stop at the gate and go through channels to try and get you back)) Those Marines manning the Embassy's aren't window dressing. They're exceptionally trained. With Additional Diplomatic training but most of all they're trained to DEFEND US SOIL while surrounded by an entire country of possible hostiles.

Can they hold out against an entire country? NOOOOOOOOOOO. Will they fight like devils with their backs to a wall and nothing to lose if they have to? Frak yes.

~

The second part is probably true though. if you nuke a US Embassy via taking out a German city, the chances of us nuking you back is low.

but noone's saying Ares would nuke them back. Again people think that there seems to be only two responces. "Total global nuclear war" or "just pass us a bill, no biggie" The truth would be in between.

Ares interests is very likely ALOT larger than one building with 100 or 200 people though. Millions and millions if not billions of yen woth of interest. PER Mega corp PER sprawl.

And if you Nuke a German city where we have an Embassy, you can count on us to do SOMETHING about it.

Again.. people are CONTINUALLY forgetting the 4 to 5 MILLION people that would die in this attack. They keep talking only about property damage. Those millions of deaths inflate your damage (( and pisstivity)) Total dramatically.

A megacorp would just send the bill. This is dystopia, money is more important than people, justice or revenge. It's when they can't agree with S-K about the bill that things get ugly.

Depends on the situation. If you go back to the cold war, and for example Heidelberg gets nuked (which would be have been close to several US Bases) I guess the NATO would have went to defcon 2-3 as fast as possible. Possibly even defcon 1.
You have to factor in the history before the event. It was expected that the cold war would turn hot in germany. So in the spirit of the time, seeing Heidelberg burn would be the warning before the rest of Europa and soon the US start to burn.
So there might have been a nuclear response closely afterwards, hoping to get a hit before New York goes up in flames.


Now imagine today Hamburg, Heidelberg, Marseille or Los Angeles gets nuked. And rumor has it, the nuke was fired by an english submarine...
The reaction of the US government and the Nato in general would be different, than in the case above.
Why: Because everybody would be trying to figur out what the hell just happend and why.
There would not be a ready to take explanation.

~

That is the Job of those Marines at the Embassy. There is still a difference between Actual American Soil (Via a physical Location in the CONUS or Seperated States), and an Embassy, though. They are not the same thing, even if they have the same connotation in some circumstances. Case in point. You can be ousted from your Embassy, at which point, it is no longer Your Native Country's "Soil."

But SK isn't like England... it'd be more like if Korea or China launched a nuke, from one of their boomers and took out one of our cities. We're not 'at war' with them at the moment, but they're not close allies of 100s of years either. If a nuke came across the Pacific and took out LA, launched from North Korea it'd have a heck of a lot different reaction than your projecting.

The "planned massive attack" would be quickly ruled out, as there is no follow-up action, no troop moves, no detectable preparation or even increased readiness, nothing. Also, the "enormously destructive major military asset" in question was Thor-shot into Oblivion...

Also,there is a big difference between the military assets of a government (like the UCAS) and those of a corporation like Ares : while the government's troops are readily available , a lot of Ares's military assets are likely to be tied into contracts with customers. Negociating with all those customers into accepting replacement forces (or paying compensations) will take times but is something of a necessity - unilaterally pulling yourself out of contractual obligations is something that the CC frowns upon, even coming from an AAA.

The level and swiftness of escalation you suggest may even result in sanctions from the CC against Ares, for overreacting and turning a very serious situation that was extremely bad for business into a planetwide mess even more disruptive for everyone's money-making scheme...

@Pepsi Jedi
First, you start taking Information for granted which is not.
Like you think everyone would be sure it was SK.
How would this be possible?
With the same argumentation it could assumed, that everyone would know it was an AI.
And if it was an AI the question it bares is: What has the CC to say about it?
What is the ruling on the actions of AIs? Who can be held responsible?
And I guess since no cooperation wanted to be hold responsible if any of their assets go rogue, welll....

So you have to take several steps:
First: To whom belonged the boomer. (And if SK would have build them, they would have sold them too)
Second: to whom belonged the rocket. (Here like with the boomer it is not even sure it was SK design and not something they bought. If both were prototyps, how would anyone identify them?)

@Pepsi Jedi
Well, but SK is not China or North Korea either.
The head of SK would eat a small army for breakfest. Literally.
Can't say that about Kim Jong Il.

This was covered eariler, but short version is, "Sk had boomers, they'd have to provision them. And they'd be tracked when they went out to sea" We can actually track subs from space now. Add 60 years of ultra tech and magic



I'll be honest and say the Matirix and AI stuff isn't my focus of Shadowrun. I don't know too much about it. I know in the 4th/anni version. Free spirits and stuff are becoming more common but I think the BIG AI's are still "Supposed" to be pretty secret and not well known. Not 100% sure



Ehhh.... I don't really see them Selling boomers that much. I mean you 'could' but think of it. The US doesn't sell aircraft carriers or our boomers. It's like giving your enemy a big gun and patting them on the back because they asked to buy one before they shoot you.



Again. Subs can be traced and launching an ICBM can easily (( as easy as such things are. don't think _I_ coudl do it, but the US and Russia could)) be detected around the world with in seconds. It's not that hard to figure it out.



yeah.. they're worse.. they're the biggest multi-national corp with a standing military, Nuclear assets and are headed by a pissy Machiavellian dragon. Loywfr isn't Dunk... He pulled his stuff off on the sly and noone trusts him. That's not your buddy. That's a big golden scaled threat. If that guy.. or Kim... "Accidentally" launches a nuke that takes out a city. You don't believe it was an accident. even WITH proof. Because if he wanted to take out the 4 or 5 million in Boston.. of course he'd claim it was an accident. Make it look like terrorists took over the boat.

So, Great Britain is fielding a fleet of boomers with nuke capable ICBM, and 4 to 5 millions of people would die in the attack, and the converse of power is responsibility, and "I didn't pull the trigger" doesn't absolve you of responsibility. But because they have been US ally since 1895, it's all different.

Basically, it's all down to trust. Why would American trust the British ? Because they have had far more interests in common in the last decades than not. Why would they not trust Pakistan, Iran, China or North Korea ? Because part of Pakistan and Iran people hate the US with a passion, because China and North Korea wants to (re)conquer lands under US forces protection.

One of the fundamental point of disagreement in this discussion lies here. Pepsi Jedi considers the UCAS government do not trust Saeder-Krupp and other foreign megacorporations. I disagree. I no longer expect to convince him, but I'm still going to expose my view.

The very basis of Shadowrun universe is that America exported to the rest of the world the idea that business are efficient and can be trusted. They provide the UCAS and the world with resources, energy, technology, money and employment. They rebuilt New York. The US, not Japan, were forty years ahead of the rest of the world when the Supreme Court allowed corporation to use lethal force (Seretech decision in 1999) and could ignore national safety regulations (Shiawase decision in 2001). Megacorporations are thousand of times larger and more diversified than American Airlines and United Airlines. But they are no different, they are driven by the same force : paying dividends. No matter how many CIA analysts and think-tank experts you summon to the War Room, no one will be able to make sense of AA and UA destroying the World Trade Center, or Saeder-Krupp nuking Boston. A madman can get to rule a country like Libya or North Korea (or, perhaps more adequately, a ruler can get to become a madman). Corporate managers are smart people.

Saeder-Krupp sure is particular case because of the scheming great dragon fully controlling it (except for one submarine weapon system it seems). Still, I can't imagine the President of the UCAS saying to the NSC "Oh, fuck, I'm not going to understand what's happening anyway, it must be one of those dragon thing. Too complicated for me. Start bombing." If he does, then he is the madman (and he just fell in a trap it seems).

Surly that's what Shadowrunners are for?

Those families who lost loved ones, those smaller Corps who lost buyers and/or facilities, the UCAS govt, CIA, FBI etc - all are going to want some sort of revenge and IF it comes out that it was SK then there will be Shadow activity, even before the official investigation is done.


Still the OP have never let us know if the news got out - guess it depends on how experimental that sub was and if the signature/missile was recognised

You really should look into it then. AI's have been publicly outed since Emergence. One even tried to hold the world hostage. Publicly.

I suppose this thread does warrant some additional information. I've found the discussion here, though heated at times, to be quite illuminating (coming from somebody who didn't grow up during the Cold War, mind you).

The nuke did go off over Boston, and the resultant blast took out most of the city center. As it was an airburst, there's much less fallout to speak of.

The boomer that launched the missile got taken out almost instantly by an Ares-owned orbital satellite. There is thus little physical evidence to go on as to who fired the missile; what little of it is left is currently miles down at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, and though the CC has sent dive teams down, they've come up empty so far.

Analyzing the radioactive signature of the missile proved more fruitful. Though the missile was an advanced multi-warhead prototype, unlike any other nuke in use by any current power, the signature is the same used by Saeder-Krupp (the boat was also Saeder-Krupp, but outside of five runners who were paid VERY handsomely by Lofwyr and aren't telling, nobody knows that. Yet.).

So the CC is still actively investigating, but ultimately right now they have no definitive proof linking the Boston blast to anyone. While they know who made the missile, they don't know who fired it and don't even know exactly where they fired it from.

Lofwyr has made an appearance on the trid, broadcast live across the Matrix, condemning the atrocity and extending his hand (and his hoard) to the UCAS to help rebuild the city. Nobody knows exactly why a Great Dragon would want to personally finance the reconstruction of one of America's oldest cities, but that's how it is.

Essentially, Boston was wiped off the map with a nuclear missile, but nobody knows who fired it or why. The Boston Blast is a bit like the Nightwraith Incident that ended the Euro Wars in that respect, one of those unsolved cases (as far as the world at large knows). Only a few people know about the AI that took over that sub, but the AI has since fled the public Matrix, never to be seen or heard from again (hopefully).

Total casualties from the blast are up to about 11 million about one month out, though that may be a media fabrication. The biggest casualty by far though has been NEONet. Their global HQ was in Boston, and after losing 90% of their top personnel in the blast, the company's stock plummeted. There has been a mass selling off of shares in the company, and Lofwyr has acquired about 40% of all their subsidiary companies and merged them with Saeder-Krupp. The death of NEONet is creating a kind of shadow war among the Corporate Court as the vultures rush to seize NEONet's facilities and assets before their rivals. Means more business for the shadowrunner world.

Anything else you all would like to know, or feel that anything's missing, let me know. That's just how I've left it at the moment. The death of Boston is a big event, and there's likely to be aftershocks for many months or even years to come.

The one good part of the Resident Evil movies was Toronto getting Nuked. All the people in the theater jumped up and cheered where I was.

Considering that it takes at least several minutes for an physical orbital weapon to reach the surface there was clearly someone inside Ares who:

Discovered that something damn serious was going on;
Discovered it at least 5 minutes prior to the missile being launched;
Knew it was from a submarine;
Knew where the submarine was accurately enough to target a weapon at it (which means within 10 km at maximum - probably within 2km);
Did not engage the missile in boost, mid-trajectory or terminal (which makes no sense - if Ares was able to engage the sub with a orbital KE or nuke their laser platforms should certainly be able to get an exoatmosphere kill against a single missile, and I can't believe that Ares doesn't have terminal defenses);
Had the authority to release a WMD.

I'd like to hear the explanation that Ares had to UCAS and the CC investigators.

And the reason about 50 orbital satellites were not able to pinpoint a ICBM launch with 2072 tech, something we can do in seconds with 2011 tech.

Maybe most of the survaillance was out of order for maintenance.
Or an other AI did that job.
May be an other runner team boarded this one satellite brought it back online and fired the the shot manually (having the target data from lofyr himself).

There are a lot of story arcs to choose from.

My bet is the runners involved are not going to live very long at all unless they are VERY valuable to Lofwyr alive. There are currently seven entities that know something that can get SK into a lot of trouble and five are sinless and no one will care if they are gone.

Some comment :
*you're not giving a timeframe but it seems a bit fast : depending on NEONET's organisation I would exepect a significant lot of the controling structure to be consolidated amongst the top management. Which would tie down those shares until inheritances are sorted out. Dead mens don"t sell their stuff, it's their kids who do it.

* I'd think Lofwyr would be a tad more subtle than this and use as many cutouts, strawmen and front companies as necessary to hide his buyout. Because snatching a whopping 40% of NEONET right after one SK-related nuke blew out their headquarters is going to put a Boston-sized hole in the 'it was just an accident' theory. With juste about every other AAA in the feeding frenzy, it strongly hint that SK has some insider knowledge to gain such a large upper hand over the rest the pack. Like knowing in advance NEONET's HQ was about to be nuked. That's likely to eran an Omega Order from the CC.

* seizing NEONET's assets by force : that one sounds a bit odd. Pressuring the mamangement into selling and the like yes. Outright parking troops into the building and saying 'now it's mine' (what 'seizing' sound like) NO. The corporate court don't tolerate that sort of crap, a good example would be the Aztlan/Aztechnology nationalisation scheme. Letting that against an AAA (even a failing one) is somethign the Court can't afford without endangering the world economy. Companies can be bought in questionable conditions, but not outright stolen by force.

Ideas on this:
Perhaps the missile was stealthed?
The OP did say his Runners stopped most of the missiles so they probably stopped most of the warheads but one but their efforts threw off other Corps attempts to stop the others?
Inside man at Ares? Vanished as soon as the Thor shot was done?
No person at Ares did this - the AI told Ares computers to Thor shot the site after it had launched?

Yeah, and the UCAS leadership and CC also know a lot more about Deus. AIs have done enough bad things that this is quite believable.



New Essen?






A F12+ spirit with Concealment did it.

How exactly do you "stealth" a huge honking rocket engine putting out megawatts of heat against a 5C ocean?

Please try the experiment. Sneak up on your house driving a firetruck with the siren running. See if you can get into the driveway without anyone noticing.


Who in the US has the ability to order someone to nuclear missile and have the missile fired? How do they get into that position of authority? Do a lot of people know who they are?

So you solution is that an AI can cause any weapon in the entire world owned by anyone to do anything it wants?

Skynet?

A SR game where you spend all your time getting chased through the radioactive rubble by automated hunter-killers programed to kill all living creatures is kind of non-mainstream.

I thought that was taking a contract against MCT in Desert Wars.

@kzt
But I guess it would be fun to do it.