Altered States is my alt-history Shadowrun campaign, still being written. This thread discusses The Collapse, the immediate consequences of the alt-VITAS pandemic (first discussed here).This is the first of two posts on this subject, I'll add the second later in the thread, hopefully sometime tomorrow.

The Collapse: Consequences of the VITAS Pandemic

The Collapse began with VITAS, the pandemic that killed 40% of the globe, 2.6 billion people. It caused wars, famine, and secondary epidemics. It spawned chaos.

These side effects of VITAS, while not as immediately lethal as the disease itself, killed an additional 10+ million people in the US, and 100-150 million worldwide. They had consequences that lingered on long after the disease sputtered out.

For all the shock and tumult caused by the Awakening, the effects of VITAS were more profound and more transfiguring. They broke apart countries, vaporized the economic system, and rewrote common assumptions about the relationship between government, industry, and private citizens. Even the emergence of orcs, dragons, and astral spirits didn’t provoke such epochal consequences.

Medical

The first casualty was the medical community, on the front lines of the epidemic. Health services, governmental and private, were overwhelmed by a combination of casualties, demand, and the breakdown of public order. As circumstances deteriorated, it became impossible to get treatment for any medical condition. Travel restrictions limited the amount of medicines available, and pharmacies soon ran out.

As a result, at the same time VITAS was killing people left and right, people were also dying of untreated conditions that would, at any other time, have been survivable. Secondary outbreaks (such as the flu or cholera) became common, and killed millions.

> VITAS is old news now, on the medical front. It happened 23 years ago, and though we still don’t have accurate models of how it worked on a cellular level, we know what it did. But during the first days of the pandemic, it was a complete unknown. No one knew how infectious it was, how it killed, or what prophylaxis might work. It was a mystery killer.

The doctors, nurses, and EMT’s who stayed on the job, treating patients without pay, were real heroes. Especially those who lived in and around breakdown zones, where violence against medical personnel was a real and present threat. A lot of my friends and classmates were killed while trying to help.

Also heroes were the army units that risked their lives to move medicine and other supplies into disputed zones. There was little to spare, but they gave away their own medical supplies more often than one would think.
- Broke-Down Back-Country Doc

Economic

The second casualty was trade. Trade depends on drivers, seamen, and dockworkers. It depends on factory workers, farmers, and craftsmen. On researchers, engineers, and designers. On salesmen, managers, bankers. All of these died en masse, with consequences for their companies and the rest of the economy.

Travel restrictions were put into place, cutting one country off from another. This halted the flow of infected individuals, but also prevented trade. Via ship, airplane, truck, or train, international trade was interdicted completely.

Oil in the Middle East could no longer be shipped to other countries, such as China (the largest consumer of Middle Eastern oil). China itself could no longer manufacture electronics for the West, as components sat on the docks in Singapore or Korea. And, even if the items could be manufactured, they couldn’t be transported to other markets.

There were no exports, there were no imports. The global economy slowed, sputtered, then disintegrated. Factories were shut down, banks closed, corporations collapsed. Stock markets cratered, destroying the retirement plans of governments, companies, and private citizens, then closed.

Governments went bankrupt. Public debt payments were suspended, causing further chaos to the banking system. Public aid programs, such as Britain’s National Health Service or America’s Social Security, collapsed. Welfare payments ceased, unemployment benefits were cut off.

The tax base collapsed, and governments paid for supplies and manpower with fiat currency or simply seized them. Widespread use of fiat currency hypercharged inflation rates. Annual inflation rates climbed into three, four, or five digits.

People were thrown out of work, with no public aid, and remained unemployed for a long time.

> It’s hard for people to understand just how destructive and widespread the economic collapse was. To isolate one economic element, corporations: no multi-national companies survived the Collapse. Corporations that had been household names and economic powerhouses—Apple, Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil—were swept away in the chaos and are now all but forgotten. Every single major corporation in existence today was founded post-Collapse.
- Lost Cause

> Founded, in most cases, after the Argentinean Model. Governments seized the property of defunct companies and sold them to qualified investors on a mortgage plan. The investors were to operate the companies and pay back the government the cost of their facilities out of their profits (usually in revalued currency, like the Japanese nuyen). The plan gave investors capital goods (like factories, raw materials, or land) and enough money to pay workers for about a year. This created jobs, allowed unused capital assets to be put into production, and created income for the government. This solution pleased no one, right-wingers considered it Socialism, left-wingers Corporate Welfare, but it worked well enough to restart the (legitimate) economy.
- PoliSci Perpetrator

Internal trade was also hampered, sometimes by quarantines, sometimes by civil strife. Goods couldn’t reach markets, including consumer goods, medicines, and food. People fell back on what they had on hand, or what could be acquired from black market sources.

Those who had local supplies were safe. Those who didn’t, starved. Even emergency supplies, often distributed by the military, weren’t enough in many areas. Famine killed between 2 and 5 million, in the US alone.

(continued...)

40% direct death rate based on a 55% mortality rate means that your are assuming that 75% of the world population caught the virus. That compares to the 1918 influenza pandemic which had a 27% infection rate and a 10-20% death rate. Essentially everyone in most countries must be infected to have those rates. Given that the virus remains active for a significant period as opposed to rapidly burning out the effects are going to be much more severe than you postulate. Pretty much no human interaction outside the family will occur except in really critical organizations, like the military, for a while. But they too will collapse with a 55% death rate.

Given that I think your postulated death rates are grossly out of synch with the death rate and infectiousness you postulate from VITAS. A typical city has about 4 days of food in stores, plus another 2-5 days in storage at people houses. If you shut down trucking for a month EVERY major US city starves. This is roughly similar in the 1st and second world, though they might have a few more or less days of food available. For example, Mexico City has 37 million people and a notoriously ineffectual government at the best of times, how many of them can find food after a month? Pretty much nobody.

Without internal transport and international trade the power grid fails in at most weeks to months. If the power grid fails the water system in most the the world fails too. Then winter comes and people freeze to death.

Essentially, instead of the 2-5 million dead of starvation, I'd expect that the you'd see about 2-5+ BILLION dead from second order effects.

You'd kill off at least 80% of the population, with nearly 100% death rates in some areas. Oh, and people confined to prisons etc are going to die at the nearly 100% rate.

Grimdork.

?

The vast majority of people were exposed, but only 75% were infected (that is, caught the virus). Of those, roughly 55% developed severe symptoms and died (over the course of about 6-9 months, depending on location).

I'm not an epidemiologist, but from the information I've gathered the traditional figure for pre-industrial, non-democratic, low-cohesion societies is roughly 20%. Historically, things fall apart when a society takes 20% casualties from... whatever.

Arguments have been made that the situation is different for industrial, democratic, high-cohesion societies. Such societies are more resilient. Depending on the type of disease, they could hang on through a plague that causes (according to one source) up to 60% casualties. All of this is speculative, as no such society has ever suffered through a pandemic of that severity.

For the purposes of the background of Altered States, I'm assuming that the 35% casualty figure for the US is survivable. That is, even though widespread death wreaks havoc, such a society can barely survive and claw back from the brink.

This could be completely wrong. But it's an assumption I'm comfortable with making.

(And, if it is wrong then there's as big a problem with canon Shadowrun, which hits 25%. Bad bad things should have happened, but largely didn't.)

First, the admission: The number of deaths I gave for starvation is ridiculously, embarrassingly low. You're more than correct on that score.

(In the back of my mind, I was thinking of the US figure, not international. I know I wrote "worldwide". To that, I can only plead Brain Fart.)

But, regarding the amount of supplies on hand in an American urban area, the figure I saw quoted—from SM Stirling, a sci fi author—is about 1 month, 2 with rationing. That may not be 100% correct, but the timeline I built allows for something in that ballpark.

My current timeline (roughly similar to the canon):

August, 2010: VITAS begins in India.
October, 2010: VITAS reaches America.
November, 2010: The Collapse begins. Martial law declared in the US. US forces recalled. Posse Comitatus is suspended.
December, 2010: Military moves to secure and man critical operating infrastructure, including power grids and oil refineries. Populations of cities plummet as people ex-migrate. Many starve or freeze.
January, 2010: Military becomes the unofficial trade network and aid source for much of the country.
February, 2011: Military aid network becomes official. The army becomes the primary source of order and aid for most rural areas and some urban areas.
March, 2011: VITAS burns out in the US.
May, 2011: US famines.
June, 2011: Order restored to all rural areas, and several urban areas.
September, 2011: Order restored to all but the largest cities.

Okay. The assumption is that by the time the 2010 harvest is underway, the situation across the globe is deteriorating. Most began hoarding food in late summer. The harvest goes through, and though prices are high, people still stock up.

The Collapse, in the US, occurs during winter. External trade is interdicted, but internal trade is allowed. It sputters on for a while, until trucking companies go bankrupt. By late winter, food supplies have run out in the major cities (earlier for the less-prepared). People begin to flee the cities.

The military, in its efforts to keep its soldiers fed and trucks fueled, establishes supply points in areas that can supply those needs, such as Texas and Kansas. It begins shipping fuel and food around to units that need it, "paying" for fuel with the USDA/OEM food reserves. Shortly after unofficial aid drops, usually of food and medical supplies, begin.

The military seizes (er..."reinforces") some critical infrastructure to allow it to function in a bare-bones manner. It pays civilians to operate power plants, oil refineries, and other critical installations with vouchers for food, fuel, or power.

In February, the Community Aid program begins, and the US Military begins officially distributing aid goods. Eventually, fuel, power, and food ration coupons are printed up and become a defacto currency.

With the above background, a figure of 2-5 million is possible, in the US alone.


I talk about the power grid in Part II, "Infrastructure". (Hopefully tomorrow.)


Depends on where you are. Not just climate, but seasons. (The southern hemisphere basically dodges winter during VITAS.) And fuel sources used. Coal, wood, peat, etc. Again, rural areas are much better off in this regard.


I'll disagree with that. If people were helpless, sure. But most aren't.

People have a way of clinging on and surviving, even in astoundingly horrific circumstances. They come up with solutions that are bizarre, but which work.

As an example, a bizarre solution to the heat problem: town bundling. (As seen in Fallen Angels, by Niven and Pournelle.) Bunch of people huddling together through a long winter, sharing heat to survive. Difficult, unpleasant, but it works.

Difficult and unpleasant, but creative solutions are the norm for humans. When pressed, they are far more inventive than anyone could predict.

For the purposes of Altered States, I'm pegging secondary deaths at no more than 100-150 million all told, worldwide. (I actually mean "worldwide", this time.)

I do appreciate your comments, kzt, you pointed out a couple of obvious errors and several not-so-obvious mistakes. I'll fix those in the next draft.

Thanks for reading and replying.

Combined with a pandemic that has a crazy high mortality rate? Nope, won't happen. Nobody will work with anyone else, they won't even allow them to approach. And they are absolutely correct.

And the military will break down with that kind of crazy morality level. Because it isn't just the military personnel dying, it's their families. So a lot of them will say screw it and run for the hills with their families after reports start coming in as to how bad it is, at least if they are not killed in the first wave. And nobody will be in a position to chase them or even figure out what happened, whether they died, deserted, are in a hospital or just vanished or got killed in the total collapse of order.

The examples of the 1918 influenza epidemic breakout at Camp Grant or Camp Devens in Barry's "The Great Influenza" are instructive, particularly as that was both far less infectious and far less lethal then VITAS. Camp Devens had a base hospital with a capacity of 1250, and on Sept 6th it had 84 patients. On Sept 22nd the hospital had over 6500 patients, with virtually no medical staff tending them because they were all also desperately ill, with a hundred men dying every day and That was with a roughly 3% mortality rate.

You are talking black death level fatalities. However the societies struck by the black death were largely agrarian. Cities were indeed depopulated, but the percentage of people who lived in cities was fairly low. The vast majority made a living by farming, so had fairly direct access to food. That most certainly isn't the case anymore. At least 50% of the world population lives in urban areas, and in the developed counties it is far higher then that. These will NOT do well.

Modern societies are far less resilient than a largely subsistence agricultural society, not more. A 13th century subsistence farmer can continue to run his farm to a large extent even if the society falls apart. There are a lot of highly specialized trades that keep a modern society running and they require a lot of interaction with each other.

And while you can probably train a PFC to drive a semi (to some level of "train") I really doubt you can train a PFC to run an oil refinery or the Eastern Interconnection in two weeks.

On the oil angle, things are somewhat alleviated (at least for crude oil) by the heavy automation already present in teh industry - all you need is a few specialists in the control room, some guys to hook the pipes to the tanker and maintenance rew for all that.

So you can run things without direct interaction between the loading crew and the tanker's crew and tinker with the work schedules to lower human interaction to a very low level.

Of course, if the specialists die you're hosed, but you can probably operate the installations at a low pitch without too much trouble. The economic turndown and reduction on the demand side will help there too.

Very interesting discussion. Keep on going.

Just a quick note on food supplies in cities. As the city depopulates the food supply becomes (effectively) more abundant as the amount of food changes little and the demand on it becomes less.

Just food for thought.

-D

You're talking about two different things:

1.) Technological and manufacturing base
and
2.) Social cohesion

These are not the same thing. I agree that specialized training cannot quickly be gained (by an individual), nor can those workers be quickly or easily replaced. Above and beyond people just dying, skilled workers (some of which I enumerated) are required and in their absence (or the absence of international trade) whole industries will collapse. Which was the entire point of the "Economic" section of the Collapse.

Social cohesion—the willingness of people to work together before, during, and after the plague has passed—is an entirely separate matter. That has no relation to agrarian or no, specialized training or no.

It depends on several factors. And modern societies, that is nation-states, are far more resilient than any traditional society. The existence of the Nation and the State cause and are caused by this resilience. Where communal (or national) identity is strong, and social trust high (and the US is among the highest social trust societies in history), society can re-cohere, or self organize even after severe disruptions. People, on their own initiative, self-organize in ways the government cannot.

Your thesis is: Before, during, and after the epidemic? No one?

Boiled down, you're claiming: "A pandemic with 35% casualties will cause social cohesion to utterly and completely disappear and it is utterly impossible for it to ever reform."

I disagree. And I've seen cogent arguments that support (and indeed prompted) my claim.

Before the epidemic, there's a tiny percentage of paranoiacs and survivalists that will withdraw. In terms of a 310 mil populace, they're insignificant.

During? The entire point of the writeup is to detail how this breakdown happens. For various reasons, the pandemic causes a lot of essential aspects of society to fall apart. But not absolutely everything, absolutely everywhere.

But after? The entire assumption of the setting is this: VITAS came. Social cohesion broke down. But people survived, and once it passed they began putting their lives back together.

Things aren't the same. But then, they never are.

Some countries disintegrated wholly, such as China and the EU. The US survived as an entity, but one with severely weakened central government. The armed forces, for example, moved back to a pre-Civil War model (raised by the state, with local volunteers, and supported by state taxes, unless called up for federal duty during wartime).

In many ways, the US returned to being a loose confederation, as under the Articles of Confederation. In the setting, each state is almost a separate country, with its own army and currency (necessary after the dollar hyper-inflated). I was referring to this when I talked about "rewrote common assumptions about the relationship between government, industry, and private citizens".

After the plague passes, high-cohesion societies can reform. And I think that makes for an interesting assumption to build the setting around.

It's at least as "realistic" as the Resource Rush and the Supreme Court declaring that business entities are sovereign nations. And, for that matter, is just as realistic as canon VITAS not causing an "Earth Abides" or "Mad Max" setting.

If canon Shadowrun can get away with skirting the examples you cite, why can't my alt-Shadowrun? Fair is fair, after all.

Nobody? At all? Out of 310 million people? Not a single doctor will help his neighbors? Not a single squad, isolated far from any of their homes, will remain a unit? Not a single group of oil workers will remain at their posts, having brought their families into their compound? Not a single biker gang, having buried their dead, will stick together for survival?

Such a blanket declamation is, by its universal nature, incorrect. And boring. (Yes, i'm playing the "that's boring" card.)

But if that's true, it's true of canon Shadowrun and the same thing should have happened there.

Or canon Shadowrun's 25%. And it does, to a large extent. Domestically, at least.

The situation is different for US units overseas, especially those operating in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Less so for those in Germany and other places.) The disease comes, hits the base, people die. Where are the survivors going to go? Saying "screw it" and running away with their families just isn't an option. They're surrounded by chaos and armed enemies so they... what?

Retrench. Reinforce. Call back all surviving units and dig in. Then, when the President authorizes an airlift, they return stateside.

All have been exposed. Those who will die, have died. But they're still cohesive units. Among the only cohesive units left. And the survivors are immune. So, they function in the manner previously described.

They begin to help those communities that have survived. They begin to protect critical infrastructure. They begin to form a communications network between those places with stable government. They ship food and fuel around, at first for their own needs, then for the needs of others.

VITAS is a fast-spreading, fast burning plague. (If necessary, I can make that more evident.) And once it's passed, the survivors can regroup.

Hell, even if you were right, and society totally collapsed, we'd be back to the "never-ending war of all against all". De facto warlords would emerge, some benevolent, some cruel. (See: "Dies the Fire", "Lucifer's Hammer", and many other novels, short stories, and movies.) They'd scavenge guns and fuel, equip a small army, and start consolidating territory. In fact, that's what I assume happens in most places.

But you are arguing that this simply cannot happen. That society will break down and cannot ever reform.

I disagree. Strongly.

Society will reform sooner or later, even if it totally evaporates. What emerges will be different—that's kind of the point—but it will re-emerge.

EDIT: I do disagree with you, but I appreciate the time you took to reply. Thank you for the feedback.

The military would be one of the first organizations to fall apart. Lots of people living together 24/7 is a perfect breeding ground for infections even at normal times. If the military was deployed it would be even worse, the soldiers would be in direct contact with infection hotspots while subjected to cramped conditions, physical exhaustion and poor hygiene.

Also, what kzt said on subsistence farming. Even if the govt still maintains emergency food reserves (do they?), the reserves could feed a fraction of the population for ten days or so. After that...well, Europe at the end of WWII...

I'm not talking about units "in the field", waging war against an active enemy. I'm talking about units that are on assignment in foreign countries, such as Japan, Germany, or Iraq. Conditions on military bases/naval ships are not cramped, with poor hygiene.

The military does, a godawful amount. There's entire departments in the Pentagon tasked with keeping soldiers supplied long-term.

On the civilian side, there's the USDA administered Strategic Grain Reserves, which stored 25 million bushels of grain (varies year to year). US citizens consume about 2.5 bushels per year, so that's enough food for 10 million people for an entire year, or 120 million for one month. And if, as I stipulated, they had time to bulk up grain reserves during the harvest, it'd be even higher, maybe +10% to +20%.

And that's at the high rates of consumption in the 2000's. Indians, as in subcontinent not American, survive on 1/5th that. Which would make the supply "worth" x5, 50 million people for a year or 200 million people for 3 months.

Yes, folks, the government stores enough wheat to feed hundreds of millions of people for several months. You're going to be hungry, but the food stores exist.

Then there's similar programs for cheese, beef, and so forth. Plus the estimated personal storage I cited above. Plus the stocking-in-advance.

Plus there's the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has (in Feb 2012) 696 million barrels of oil in storage, enough for 36 days of use for the entire country. Motorcycles, scooters, SUV's, personal yachts, single engine planes, every other single civilian vehicle in the entire country and, oh, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. At present day levels of use.

36 days, in reserve. More, if the population drops, travel is restricted, or the fuel is rationed. (SUV's? No. Firetrucks? Okay.) Even more, if the people in charge see VITAS chewing its way across Asia and get smart enough to stock up on oil before the plague hits LA or NY. (Which, in this continuity, they did.)

A pandemic would cause serious problems. But emergency planning is the focus of the federal, state, and local governments, as well as entire University departments and private companies (petroleum and agriculture companies, especially).

You may have read about zombie planning, where real-world government agencies have made emergency plans for a zombie apocalypse? It's not because they think it's likely, it's because planning for those kinds of extreme events are fun, and the plans can be applied to more mundane, but still extreme crises. They do this for a living.

"Society breaks down forever" and "everybody dies" are not absolutely guaranteed, even with 40% casualties. But let's say they are.

Then you can scale back the lethality to 30%, 25% (the canon), or 20% (the commonly accepted "survivable" casualty rate). If you choose to use this alternate VITAS, or alternate setting, just set the rate at whatever you personally feel is survivable.

For me, it's 40%. For other's, it's more or less. YMMV, in other words.

Cheers!

I think the fallout series hits home pretty straight forward on what would actually happen. Even if you reduced people down to their base of instincts, they would still congregate together, disease or not. Only the most paranoid would "segregate themselves" from society, they also tend to be the ones that turn into cannibals and eat other humans that venture into their fringe areas.

Where as in fallout you have those you also have the "leaders" of new societies, good bad and ugly (survivor towns, bandits, and oddities (ghouls)).

I think the same is probably true of post VITAS world. Shit sucks, time to rebuild.

Also, SR 2010 was more technologically advanced than today's 2010 in terms of mechanized labor. (ala Robocop)
So, automation could have kept society on the rails better than we would expect today for the purposes of keeping essential resources coming into the cities.

You don't need to train a PFC to drive a train that drives itself and loads/unloads itself.

That's pretty much my approach to the post-VITAS years (2011 to 2032).
I agree and, for the purposes of Altered States, assumed that this happens pretty much everywhere. This is where social cohesion comes in.

The higher the social cohesion, the more people see themselves as citizens of a country, the more likely they are to accept reintegration even when they don't have to. By and large, social cohesion was high in Commonwealth Nations, Western Europe, the United States, and a few other territories (like Thailand). It was low in most of the rest of the world, and very low in Africa (whose countries had always been political fictions masking deep tribal divisions).

In high cohesion countries, reunification or reclamation (as the US Military called it) succeeded in recreating or restoring a central government and vesting it with legitimacy. In other places, the countries Balkanized, or descended into chaos. (Strong leaders could and did forge disparate enclaves into a new polity, but many of these were less than stable—prone to collapse, rebellion, or being absorbed by more powerful neighbors.)

In the US, the military served as the main means by which the country was reunified. (To the extent it happened. The NAN movement resisted reclamation efforts until the Awakening, which allowed them to launch a war.) Even though the resulting country lacked a strong central government, enough people considered themselves Americans to allow a nation to cohere out of the chaos of the Collapse.

(Similar, but different events occurred in other places. Enough people considered themselves to be Australians, Germans, or Thai that their societies could re-emerge. Russia was reunited by main force, one conquest at a time. This eventually lead to the EuroWars.)

In the US, the war with the NAN may have helped this. A fight against an obviously hostile enemy tends to increase national identification. Howling Coyote strengthened the cohesion of the rest of the country, at the same time he was leading would-be breakaway regions. Ironic, but true.

Thanks for the comments, Jeremiah.

I'm not saying you can't build society. I'm saying that a horribly infectious and horribly lethal pandemic will prevent that until the plague is burned out and for some time afterward. You are talking about a pandemic that is 2-3 times more infectious than the 1918 influenza epidemic and has a fatality rate on the order of 2500% higher. Directly kills, not second order effects. Including second order effects you are probably talking about 80% of the human population dying, with the highest level of survival in the least urbanized countries. Countries like Uganda, Rwanda, and Afghanistan.

Plus it makes the SURVIVORS sick for 5-6 weeks. Which suggests that essentially everyone is going to be sick or taking care of family members who are sick, or in quarantine for at least 2-3 months. During the winter in the Northern Hemisphere. (Nov, Dec, Jan) Everyone includes cops, soldiers, nurses, power company linemen, truck drivers, train engineers, grain elevator operators, oil refinery operators. Entire nations will be sick at home for months, and half of them will die from the disease. Those who don't have the infection in their houses will take steps to stay that way, which includes not leaving and nobody coming in. Fuel will run out and things will fall more and more to pieces. People will freeze to death in their homes in the Northern Hemisphere.

Eventually people will stop getting sick and the deaths will stop. At that time you can start to try to get stuff working. People who try to jump the gun and rebuild too early will die horribly, as will their families.

I understand what you're saying. I understand why you're saying that. My response is:

1.) For those that think that, simply turn the lethality down. Instead of 40% deaths, go with 30%, or 20% or whatever you consider plausible.

2.) The commonly accepted "society killer" death rate is 20%. (AFAIK.) I've seen sources make the case for 40%-60%, which is what I went with. No one has to accept this, just turn the rate down.

What's important for my campaign (and canon SR) isn't the exact percent, it's what after-effects the disease caused. In my game, it lead to a unified but severely weakened US (the "Articles of Confederation" US) and the NAN rebellion. In the canon, it lead to... well, Shadowrun.

Those are perfectly reasonable and, AFAIK, true statements. We just disagree about where to draw the line.

By way of curiosity, what lethality do you think is socially survivable? What lethality do you think would lead to a weakly united, almost Articles of Confederation US?

A quick clarification: The alt-VITAS only causes one symptom—the infected acquire new allergies. They become allergic to, for example, vinyl, pet dander, peanuts, etc. Which specific allergies a patient acquires varies based on environment.

Thus people "sick" with the disease only suffer ill effects when they come into contact with something they're allergic to (an allergen). If they haven't, they appear completely healthy.

VITAS isn't like the flu or any other infectious disease. People with it can appear healthy for long periods of time. Only when they encounter specific allergens do they display symptoms.

It's an odd disease, but it perfectly matches the acronym: Virally Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome. The virus induces allergies, which in some patients are lethal. The description of the disease follows from that.

This is something else I can futz with.

Given carte blanche, and knowing what social and campaign world effects I'm aiming for (AoC US, limited secondary effects from famine, etc.), what values would you give for:

1.) Infectiousness (% pop. exposed who become ill)?
2.) Lethality (% ill people who die)?
3.) Latency (avg. time period after infection but before before first symptoms appear)?
4.) Time to severe symptoms (avg. time period after symptoms, until lethal symptoms first appear)?
5.) Length of infection (avg. time ill, from exposure to becoming well)?

Just curious what you think.

The other questions that comes to mind are:

1) If you have VITAS and recover are you immune to future infections?

2) It appears as I reread things that the 25% of people who don't get VITAS are intrinsically immune. Is that correct?

VITAS itself is gone, other than samples left in the ground (in mass graves), government labs, or whatever reservoir it originally came from (a specific population of birds, monkeys, or some other species of animal located somewhere on the border between India and China).

On an individual level, once you get well, you're immune to VITAS and stuck with whatever allergies you gained while ill, for the rest of your life.

But, VITAS causes you to acquire allergies that are indistinguishable from naturally acquired ones. One of the aspects of allergies is that each time you're exposed to a specific allergen, there's a chance your reaction will become worse. (A tiny chance, but a chance.) If it does, you might find yourself with a lethal allergy, years after the fact. As Orc Rights Crusader said, "VITAS is still killing people, decades after the disease went away."

Yes. 25% of human beings (or meta-human beings, for that matter) are intrinsically immune to the disease. Inject it into their veins, they will never become sick.

This immunity seems to be distributed more-or-less evenly across ethnicities. I'm assuming its tied to one chromosomal mutation or another, which may have other effects. Maybe you're immune to VITAS, but more vulnerable to heart disease or tension headaches.

Me neither, but soldiers on relief effort are not exactly living in holiday resorts, either
And like I said, even in normal times a military base means lots of people living together on relatively small space, plus thousands of commuters. So even though the military will probably see less than 75% infection rate and 55% lethality, as the average soldier is in better physical shape than the total population average, the consequences would nevertheless be devastating.

Just for comparison, the cumulated losses of the Wehrmacht in WW2 were a bit under 30%. And yes, that makes even the canon 25% VITAS deaths seem ridiculous.



But they don't just eat grain

With the 1918 influenza pandemic the casualty rate among the young and healthy was significantly higher then the general population. There is a huge upward wedge in the mortality figures, centered on about age 30 and starting at 5 and running to about 45.

True, that's why I pointed out programs for beef, cheese, and other staples. Plus the "on-hand" supplies issue. (Though I left out the several foreign aid food programs, which also keep large stocks of food on hand.) The point being that there is a lot more food available than people have been assuming.

But this is a smaller part of a larger issue. If you feel that 40% death rate is implausible, just adjust it downward.

Are you referring to those who returned to America? Because not all troops in foreign countries are on aid missions.

Military bases are not dark, dirty holes people are crammed into. I know, I grew up on a base in Germany (Hoi to Schweinfurt!) and one in the US (Fort Knox, KY). Plus, I live near another. (Hill AFB.) I know military bases.

But this is a red herring, as even were they dark, dirty holes it wouldn't make a significant difference to alt-VITAS. What is more on point is the casualty figures.

My point is, and was, that military units (especially those in hostile territory) can take 40% casualties from alt-VITAS and still maintain unit cohesion.

You cite Wehrmacht in WW2. I see that, and raise Paulus' 6th Army in the battle of Stalingrad. He started with 250,000 soldiers, and by the end was down to 91,000. That's 64% casualties, during which his Army remained intact and actively engaged in brutal combat with the Soviets. (I looked for Soviet casualties in the same battle, but could only find body counts, not a percentage.)

Army units, cut off in a foreign land, surrounded by hostiles (Iraq and Afghanistan), who take 40% casualties can survive as a unit. But...

Again, this is part of a larger dispute. If 40% seems unrealistic, dial it back.

Your game, your rules, your fun.

Problem with those is that unlike rice, beans, and condensed milk, they are perishable. Which is why such goods are usually only bought up for price stability or as indirect subsidies and not intended (or prepared) for distribution among the population.
And if I'm understanding you correctly, you are assuming major population centers will run on bunkered supplies for months.


I'm referring to what I initially quoted: The troops deployed domestically for relief efforts, manning critical infrastructure, yadda yadda.

Wherever soldiers are billeted, there are lots of people in one place. And where lots of people are in one place, diseases spread. The place does not need to be dark and grimy, just a lot of people coughing, shaking hands, breathing the same air, touching the same door handles...


Keeping fighting is not that hard when somebody keeps shooting at you, but acting effectively on a larger tactical or strategic level is something else

No, because 75% of the unit and their families are sick for 5-6 weeks, and over half of them die. What do you think that period will be like? And there is no outside enemy providing the incentive to hold together.

Cheese can survive for long periods of time. Even if it gets moldy, you cut off the moldy bits and the rest is edible. (The flavor changes, but it is edible.) Meat can be preserved in any number of ways including jerking (salt and drying) and canning (canned meat can last for a couple of years).

And perishability doesn't really impact the current discussion. They store the food. It's there. I know, I've seen it. I've eaten it.

The point is that there is a lot of food—a year of grain for millions of people, and many other types of food besides—set aside by the government. And that ignores food stored by private charities, such as the Catholic Church or local food banks, personal gardens, or personal food storage (such as practiced by Mormons, who are encouraged to keep a 1 year's supply of food in their houses).

Plus, the hungrier you are, the more things become edible. People can eat dandelions, weeds, bugs, worms, dogs, cats, and many other things they normally wouldn't, if hungry enough. You can even survive on that crap.

The notion that "9 days in the city, then no food, then everybody dies" is simply wrong. It's wrong as to the amount of food normally available (1-2 months), it's wrong as to the amount of government food available. More, it's wrong as a matter of basic biology.

Given adequate hydration, humans can survive with no food at all for up to 40 days (per Scientific American). Given adequate water, they can survive for years on tiny amounts of food eaten intermittently. (As concentration camp survivors showed.)

So, yes, major population centers can survive on "bunkered", personal, and private food stores for months. (Setting other problems aside.) In fact, those same cities could survive on no food at all for 28 to 40 days!

If we're going to criticize the VITAS/The Collapse writeup on the basis of realism, we should use real facts and statistics. The above information is, to the best of my knowledge, accurate. Altogether it means that the situation is not as dire as was initially claimed.

There is a gradual breakdown in the effectiveness of those troops, as the plague proceeds. Eventually, they suffer from high rates of desertion, and in many cases the chain of command is broken.

By that point the government has called the troops back from Afghanistan, Iraq, and pretty much every other place on the globe. Those soldiers have already survived the plague, and can be used as-is. They become the backbone of Reclamation.

It depends on who you are, and the circumstances you find yourself in. Desertion happens while under fire, while travelling to a battle, after a battle, on leave, when being called up for duty...

The claim (not yours) was that every soldier would grab their families and head for the hills, then the families would fall apart. My point was that those soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have no families on base. And even if they did, there was no place they could flee to, they're stuck in a foreign country and the only safe spot is with the other soldiers, where they already are.

Medical facilities? Modern on base, poor in the boondocks. Food, water, housing? Guaranteed to be there on base, iffy at best elsewhere. Security? You're surrounded by thousands of other soldiers on base... vs. being alone outside.

And, despite all the back and forth, no one has explained why the opposite is true: that soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq would flee the safety of their base and run into enemy territory, into a country falling into chaos, riven with ethnic or tribal warfare, directly into the maw of an ongoing plague. That's just silly to claim, yet it's been repeated several times in the thread.

And even were it proved, it's just a small part of the larger issue. If you feel that 40% death rate is implausible, just adjust it downward.

It's that easy.

There wasn't any such military in the mainline SR timeline, I'm not sure what you are using as the POD. I never discussed them.

Assuming you use it with troops as deployed in October 2010:

Having 75% of the population sick for a period that is likely to be about 7 weeks means that nothing gets done. Litterally everyone who is still functional is going to be taking care of the sick. You can see this in reports of the 1918 Influenza epidemic, where they shut down every thing on the base and dragooned everyone not sick into doing things to help out. That might be unloading vehicles, or building new addtions to the hospitals, cooking, nursing, digging graves or scrubbing floors. Not to mention trying to maintain security. Everyone not sick is going to be very busy.

I've heard that the larger bases have huge stocks of fuel and food, so the total shutdown of transport can be survived. I have my doubts about whether the smaller bases have things like 6-8 weeks of fuel, and whether you could effectively organize resupply or even evacuations. Moving large numbers of very sick people is hard and Iraq and Afghanistan are cold in December and January.

Platoon or company sized outposts (which is where much of the line troops are deployed) that run out of fuel and food are going to be in a lot of trouble. When you have 50 guys trying to take care of 150, plus maintain security and you have no fire support and eventually no radio batteries, things are likely to get pretty bad pretty fast.

You've cited that example several times. In an earlier post, I tried to explain why it isn't as applicable as it would appear. However, I think we crossposted (we both submitted within minutes of each other), so you never saw my post.

Just so we're both on the same page, here's the post you might have missed. Also, from the next post I'm working on, here's a more in-depth explanation.

--excerpt--

VITAS is a peculiar disease, utterly unlike any other in human history. Its only effect on the body is to cause new allergies, and the only symptoms of VITAS are anaphylactic reactions to those allergies, and then only when someone is exposed to a specific allergen.

One can have VITAS and not know it, even when the virus is active. One can be infectious and symptomatic, and not know it.

Patients infected with most lethal diseases require frequent or constant care, often hospitalization. Their symptoms (fever, nausea, and so forth) need to be managed, because they’ll kill the patient.

VITAS is very different. For the first 3-6 days after exposure, there are no symptoms. The first symptoms that appear vary widely (as with all occurrences of anaphylaxis), but are invariably mild and thus easy to overlook and hard to confirm as VITAS symptoms. In fact, due to the variety of symptoms anaphylaxis can cause, VITAS can easily be mistaken for over a dozen different diseases, most of which aren’t lethal.

During the next 12-24 hours, the 55% who will die suffer steadily worsening symptoms, if—and only if—they’re exposed to their allergens. After that time, any exposure to an allergen prompts a lethal anaphylactic reaction and the person dies.

Those who will survive the sickness remain infectious for 5-6 weeks, but other than the occasional mild to moderate anaphylactic reaction require no care. Unless exposed to an allergen, they can function normally in whatever position they usually occupy. They have no fever, no nausea, no headaches, no diarrhea, no bleeding, nothing to indicate they are sick at all.

VITAS is a stealth killer. Its symptoms are hard to discern, it remains infective for a long time, and those who will die do so quickly and dramatically (usually within a week of exposure). In fact, the sudden deaths were usually the first sign that a given population had been exposed. VITAS spread fast, killed fast, and carriers remained infectious for over a month after exposure.

> That’s why the international quarantine didn’t make a difference, and just about everyone who could catch the disease did. VITAS was over the wall and across the country before we knew it was anywhere. The time difference between LA’s Health Department reporting “deaths, likely due to the New Delhi Flu” and when a dept in rural Georgia did was measured in days. In effect, VITAS hit everywhere, all at once.

There was little time to flee, little time to panic because by the time people knew there was something to panic over, those who would die had already died. Within a couple of weeks, 40% of the population just vanished.
- Asclepian

--end excerpt--

With alt-VITAS, people don't have to spend time caring for the "sick", because they don't appear ill until they encounter something they're allergic to (i.e. an allergen). It's a very peculiar disease, in that way.

Up until the outbreak of VITAS, in Aug of 2010, my timeline tracks exactly with the real world. (With a couple of exceptions: fictitious individuals such as Howling Coyote and the ancient, magical past.)

So, VITAS is the first "Shadowrun" event to happen. The Awakening (Dec 2011) is the second.

I am, though the exact details of alt-VITAS are different enough that your explanation—which would well fit a typhus, TB, or influenza outbreak—doesn't fit an outbreak of alt-VITAS. Hopefully the above explanation and the other post will clarify why.

Sorry we got our wires crossed.

Actually, that makes it worse. It means that people think they are not yet exposed, so packing up and fleeing for the hills is perfectly logical.

It also means that nobody knows when the pandemic is over, because people NEVER get better and people keep dropping dead.

You'd have to kill off >90% to do that. Essentially kill enough people that technological society can't be maintained. Or produce some effect that prevents people from being able to associate. A mysterious plague that kills without prior symptoms in horrible ways for years might go a long way towards accomplishing that, but I doubt you want "strangers will be shot" as the most common street sign. If you can maintain modern technological society you will. Particularly as never really recovering from a total state of emergency will mean that you won't get a goverment breakdown.

The Black Death killed a huge percentage of the population, believed to be around 50% in England. It was commonly believed during the pandemic that everyone was going to die. In England the first wave hit in autumn 1348 and ended in December 1349. In 1361-62 20% of the population died in the second wave, with subsequent waves normally killing less and often being more localized. The government remained in power, the structure of society was somewhat changed as the survivors had the ability to demand more pay and there was deflation in land etc due to the large number of people who had no survivors. It largely ended the tradtion of the peasents being tied to the land, but not the kind of result you are looking for. The government was able to crush a couple of rebellions shortly after the plague ended. In general I can't think of a European country where the scale of the change you are looking for happened.

So I'm not sure you can reasonable expect the result you desire without killing a crazy large percentage of the population, enough that you can't maintain a high tech society. Even so, nobody in their right mind is going to decide to organize the clan of the bearkiller as a replacement government, and nobody will join up the obviously insane people who try. They will shoot them instead, or go to the sheriff and he'll shoot them.

People don't keep dropping dead because the majority of those who would die, actually did die during a 2-week period. (Those who will die, die 4-7 days from exposure.) After that, the deaths just stopped.

And people knew it was over (at least those who paid attention to reports coming out of India and other places) because the deaths just stopped.

"No one dying" = "plague over." That's a logical conclusion. And one many people reached on their own.

I know you'll argue with me, but I disagree. This disease allows people to function in their jobs, even while sick, enabling economic recovery and unit cohesion. (Also important as they keep their allergies for life.) It also provides a clear sign as to when the epidemic reached your town, and when it burned out.

"Bodies dropping" = "danger". "Nobody dying" = "safe". And people quickly learned that.

Not quite true.

Those who survived the Red Days were either uninfected, immune, or were only mildly or moderately symptomatic. And while the latter never got any better, they also never got any worse. So far as most were concerned, they were immune. (An incorrect, but logical assumption.)

No more or less than in (for example) an influenze epidemic. "Not sick" = "flee" is the same judgment call whether you're actually not sick, or just think you're not sick.

Survival of Civil Society

The reason civil society survived is, first volunteerism (people in high cohesion areas risking their lives for their neighbors), which gave rise to "local sovereignties". The second is the replacement troops from overseas.

They'd suffered through the plague, several weeks before it became a problem in the US. Having survived, they could return and operate without having to worry about further casualties. And they did a lot of good.

How?

The epidemic burned out quickly, in the US (speed of travel = speed of transmission). And by the time the burnout happened, the US government had seen the progression in other countries, and had many first-hand reports from US personnel in those countries. They knew how the disease progressed.

When the troops abroad were recalled, they began reclaiming critical facilities. They also began liaising with "local sovereignties", part of which included educating people on the epidemic and why the worst had passed. (Call it "propaganda" if it makes you feel better.) They also offered people food and fuel for employment.

Sure, running for the hills makes sense (to many or most) when you have food and other supplies. But when you and your kids are going hungry (not starving to death, just very very hungry), working for food is a great deal. And if the government is saying things are safe...

Many people took them up on it. And when others saw that things actually were safe (for the most part), more agreed to the bargain.

Not everyone, everywhere. And (generally) not those in hostile sovereignties or "no-go" zones. But enough agreed that it eased the effects of the Collapse somewhat. Which gave the country enough breathing room to widen efforts. Bit by bit Reclamation restored infrastructure, got a modicum of an economy going (accidentally, as regards ration coupons), and integrated local sovereignties into the larger nation.

What emerged was a country governed at the local level. In most places state governments had little power, and the Federal government had almost no power, save that exercised by the weakened army. The situation has changed in the intervening 21 years, but that's where things stood during the winter and spring of 2011.

(Then the NAN guerrilla war kicked into high gear. The NAN were the only sovereignties to successfully resist Reclamation.)

The deployed manpower in Iraq was 49,700 in august 2010. There are ~98,000 in Afghanistan. In either case getting them back to the US is not going to be quick or easy. Assuming nobody gets killed by the locals or freezes to death, that has ~66,000 troops arriving some time over the spring. Give that the entire US military is 1.4 million, plus 850K in the reserves I just don't see this 66K force accomplishing anything even close to what you expect, particularly as they are almost certainly going to abandon most heavy equipment, burn a significant amount of the jet fuel available to the US, and arrive piecemeal.

Best data I can find is a Pentagon document dated Sept 30, 2010. The numbers given in that document are 96,000 for Iraq, 105,000 for Afghanistan, 17,000 for those operations but in other countries, and 297,000 for the rest of the globe. Altogether, 515,000. (Source here.)

(Not all of those units are Army, that includes all the branches. But it also excludes National Guard and Reserve Units in the same areas.)

40% casualties gives out-of-country strength of 309,000. That's a significant force, equivalent to 24 divisions, 8 corps, or 6 armies. (Again, after casualties.) That's equivalent to the armed forces of France and 1/3rd larger than the entire British army.

One infantry company can reinforce and hold a critical installation, like a power plant or refinery. That size force has 2090 companies.

Yes, that size a force can have a tremendous impact on Reclamation. In fact, it makes Reclamation possible.

Nothing is easy, especially when it comes to managing troop movement and logistics. But "difficult, grueling, and painful" doesn't equal "impossible". I point to... hell, just about any desperate situation people have faced and overcome.

In this case, emergency airlift of military personnel, there's an entire organization already dedicated to the task. I introduce the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, consisting of 1,364 civilian aircraft dedicated to the purpose of moving soldiers and materiel in emergencies. And they're just a supplement to the C-5's and C-130's of the US Air Force.

Suppose each airplane could only carry a single company. (More likely is up to 2 companies, 300 passengers. A 747, for example, can carry up to 600.) 2 trips each by just 75% of those aircraft, and the entire force is moved. (Send them to an AFB, army post, supply depot to pick up M-16's and gear and they're ready to begin... whatever.)

Now, there are going to be difficulties and problems with running that many jets. And it will take longer than a couple of days. It would be a logistical nightmare. But it is possible.

2000 companies can make a serious dent in national problems, enough to get critical facilities up and running, and enough to make sure local sovereignties remain up and running.

Not easy, not quick, but possible.

I'm a little confused. You first said that 40% death rate, on its own, was enough to cause the total atomization of society as people fled from each other, in fact even the family structure would break down. No military, no government, no corporations. Essentially Mad Max.

So how can it require 90% death rate to achieve a far less drastic dispersal of authority? Less casualties should equal more cohesion.

Let me clarify my terms, in case that's the source of confusion. During the Collapse, authority broke down to the local level (excepting Utah, for peculiar reasons, and a couple of other places). The military Reclamation effort recreated a nation, but one with a fairly weak central government. (Equivalent to the pre-Civil War US or the States under the Articles of Confederation.)

Due to the Long Depression, the Federal government just doesn't have the money to implement and maintain the regulatory agencies, social programs, and defense spending of the post-WWII years. Thus, no FDA, no EPA, no Social Security, and on and on. Federal regulations, even if technically "on the books" have become unenforceable.

The central government is still there, it just doesn't have much to do with the daily lives of most people. (As was the case in, for example, the 1870's.) It maintains a small standing army, primarily for border control, the Post Office, and conducts foreign affairs. All other matters are left to state jurisdiction.

90% deaths from a disease wouldn't cause such a system, it would cause a post-apocalyptic Book of Eli, Earth Abides, or Mad Max situation. But a near-total collapse of society, saved by the slimmest of threads, and restored as much as possible would cause this situation. IMHO.

And we're back to the same conundrum. Again, you said that 40% death rate would cause total social breakdown as people fled for the hills. Yet England's society survived 50% death rate?

Those two seem to be in direct contradiction of each other. Perhaps the difference is due to one being a pre-industrial, traditional, agrarian society, and the other a modern industrial nation-state. In that case, the Black Death example wouldn't be definitive, as the two types of societies differ greatly.

In Altered States, 40% casualties causes a great deal of wreck and ruin. Society fell apart in many areas, but clung on in others. And Reclamation brought it back from the brink.

Plus, the situation isn't due to just VITAS. The NAN war, the Awakening, and the Long Depression all played a part.

High tech societies can be maintained with a surprisingly small population. Singapore, Israel, and Hong Kong, for example. (Though all depend on international trade.)

In terms of absolute population, the pop of the US in 1945 was 140,000,000. 2010, pre-VITAS, it was 309,000,000. After VITAS, and including an estimated 20 mil secondary effects casualties, it would be 165,400,000. Even if we assumed an additional 20 million deaths on top of that, it would still be higher than in 1945.

Though, in all fairness to that sheriff, guns no longer worked in his world. Swords, bows, and pikes worked just fine, however.

You are confusing effect during the actual pandemic and effects after the pandemic.

Things would go completely to hell during the pandemic. Just as they did during the black plague. Given the dependency on a sophisticated transportation network, "just in time" logistics and the limited ability of highly complex infrastructure systems to operate without supervision things are likely to get very, very ugly.

Once the pandemic passes then people will try to reestablish their lives. This means fixing crap that broke and reestablishing order if needed. One obvious thing they will do is reestablish communication to the government. As the number of survivors is akin to 1960 there certainly isn't any reason why they can't reestablish a governmental structure similar to what existed. in the 1930 to 60s.

If you want a decentralized goverment the last thing you want is a central goverment that can deploy a military and "save us". You want "Hitler in the Bunker", where what the powerless guys far away makes no sense and people stop caring about the minutia of OSHA and EPA rules seems to be the only thing that the nuts in DC seems to be focused on. And they have no ability to send armed bodies of troops to enforce their will.

I think a major source of disagreement lies in this:

If an infection affects 75% of the population that does not mean that 75% get hit immediately while the remaining 25% are immune. It means that when looking at a sufficiently large and diverse group of persons for a certain amount of time, three out of four will suffer an infection. It's basically a stochastic process, every second has a certain chance of contact with the pathogen, and a certain chance that the natural defenses will not just sweep it out.

This has a couple of consequences. Most importantly, the disease will not just die off once everybody infected on day one is dead. New infections occur every day, until for some reason all sources of infection are removed without creating new ones in the process.
Secondly, being put on rationing for months (btw, I was not the one who brought up the claim of days ) suppresses the immune system. This counteracts the tendency of epidemics to burn out, as vulnerable victims are newly created every day -- and they become more vulnerable with each day. The fact that everything is supposed to happen in winter makes it even worse.
Lastly, soldiers (and everybody else trying to help) who were not infected in the initial outbreak are not immune. Once they get to work, the dying starts again. And if the troops move cross country, or are in contact with people who do because the army runs layover points, they help spreading the disease even further. Maybe VITAS burned out in your small, isolated nest. But once a relief convoy arrives, the whole shit start again.

I know. And I'll back that up with some examples.

Suppose a guy was off hiking in a state park (Yellowstone, say) when VITAS was first tearing through. He never gets exposed. If he later leaves and encounters someone infected, there's a 75% chance he'll get ill, and a 55% chance he'll die within 4-7 days. Believe me, I understand that isolation prevents disease transmission.

VITAS didn't infect every single person on the face of the planet. But it was so infectious (R0 north of measles, in industrialized countries) that the uninfected were a statistical outlier (.06 percent of the population). In the US, pop 309,000,000, there were probably 100,000 - 200,000 people unexposed by the time the disease began killing.

VITAS transfered through bodily fluids, sneezing, or coughing. Touch your mouth, shake hands... you just spread the virus. Drink a soda at a restaurant, the busboy touches the glass... another person exposed. Stand on a subway and breathe hard, tiny droplets of fluid are expelled, and... you just got someone sick.

More, the virus was a tough little bastard. It could survive on surfaces for up to a day. Use the restroom, touch the sink, handdryer, and door handle... people exposed.

VITAS didn't need to infect literally everybody to infect pretty much everybody. And all this happened before the first suspected cases started appearing.

Let's break this down a little more. People began being infected in several large cities, like LA, NY, Chicago, Seattle. Hubs of travel, in other words.

Their clock started ticking from the moment they were exposed. 3-6 days later they became symptomatic and 12-24 hours after that they began to die. People who didn't catch it until a day or two or three later, died later. But the disease was still spreading in the meantime.

Rural Georgia first reported suspected deaths a week after LA. By that time, the disease had hit a huge percentage of the places it was going to (99.94%).

The deaths in LA kicked off two weeks of mass deaths across the country. After that spike the deaths faded away because, except for 40% of the 100,000-200,000 uninfected, everybody who was going to die had already died.

When it hit, it hit hard. But when the mass deaths were past, it had burned out. Sure, it was going to suck for the 40,000-80,000 who hadn't been exposed, and would die if they were, but by that time other factors (covered in the first post in this topic) were killing millions. 40,000 more, give or take, wasn't going to make a big difference.

There were continuing deaths, in other words, but from factors other than the disease. (And an impaired immune system from low food stores would make a difference in many of those cases.)

[Note: there's a couple of problems, not touched on in the thread thus far, that pose severe difficulties for the timeline. I'm going to have to think those over, and it looks like I'll have to futz with the numbers a bit. One big problem: 40% of the population just didn't vanish, they died. Where do you put them? And what happens in the meantime? Nothing good, especially for cities. Food for thought.]

True, and I didn't mean to imply you did. My apologies.

Once the reality of what is going on, they lie in the street or in the houses where they died until people decide it is safe to come out. It will NOT be very nice.

The virus is described as behaving very differently than any real agent, so the obvious assumption will be that it is a deliberate bio agent that got out of control. Think about the impact of that decision.

I agree. The problems I was thinking of were...

Suppose you live in an urban area with 10 million people. 4 million suddenly drop dead, pretty much evenly distributed across every single family, neighborhood, and SES group. If those do, as you say, just lie there (for the most part. Some places will get cleanup crews around), they're going to begin to rot. And attract flies. And that's fertile soil for a whole 'nother epidemic. Flies that feed off the dead, and the dead bodies themselves, are fertile breeding grounds for disease.

That's crossed my mind. But I was thinking, however, that it would be more interesting if it were a para-species. That is, the first magical species to appear. It would explain a lot about the disease.

Not sure what consequences that would imply. But it's very Shadowrun-esque.

(And, as in mainline SR, the prayers and rituals performed by people during VITAS are the first appearances of magic.)

I agree, hence the original post. I've tried to touch on all of those.

There's a big one: money. It takes a lot of money to run the government. And the economy is screwed to hell and back.

The currency hit triple digit annual inflation, and is essentially worthless. The stock market cratered, banks are MIA, there's a critical labor shortage and something like 70% unemployment. (People with real skills will find employment. "Performance Art" majors will have to either retrain or join the bread lines.) Trillions of dollars of wealth just disappeared in the Collapse.

International trade is MIA and will be for years. No cheap Chinese goods for WalMart. No Chinese engines for John Deere. No Chinese factories to produce iPads and iPhones. (Even if all those companies had survived, which they didn't.)

America went from being a rich, rich, rich country to being... well, worse off than in 1920. Before WWII, 50% of the population lived below the poverty line. As in "no electricity, wood stove, crap in an outhouse" poverty line. Survivable, but not wealthy.

After the Collapse, it's gone back to that situation. (As in mainline Shadowrun. Ever wonder where all the people in the Barrens come from? Now you know.)

"Screwed to hell and back" just isn't vitriolic enough.

The economy will get moving again, but very, very slowly. People can find work, but in the beginning they're working for ration coupons. The Argentine Model will put a bunch of defunct businesses back into production, but again very slowly.

Plus, the US will have to rebuild an industrial base that's been withering since 1960's. We'll have to start producing steel again, and start making parts here. We'll have to become largely self-sufficient.

All of this adds up to... The Long Depression. (Which I've mentioned before.) A very weak economy, anemic economic growth (at least, when compared to the population growth), and a couple of decades of widespread poverty and deprivation.

It isn't that there's no federal government. Or that people are rebelling and creating their own countries. (Other than, you know, the NAN.) It's that there just isn't the taxation base to support an expansive defense establishment and domestic agenda.

Government programs require money. And the money just isn't there.

Nope, there would be a chance of let's say 30% that he gets infected. The next time he has contact with VITAS, it's another 30% chance and so on and so forth.

Basically a series of Bernoulli trials, with the number of trials being how often the average person will be in a situation where he could get infected...

Just want to point out: Losing 50% of the population in england back then, does not in any way come close to losing 20% of the population in 2011... Even then, 20% of the population is a drop in the bucket compared to the total population of the globe. 40% of the population STILL probably leaves more people in the world than the population of the world during the age of the black plague.

Just thought that was a relevant thought to the ideas of a massive pandemic. Unless you get to zombie flick (5% left) you aren't going to end society, period, and even then that 5% is gonna seek to keep some semblence of society and attempt to rebuild, even if it takes them back 3 decades of tech, they will move on.

Second the fact that a flat percentage of people have immunity (diseases don't have this) combined with the fact that even if infected it requires two secondary issues (the allergen and not recieving treatment for the problem quickly) makes me think even less of the idea that this disease would end society. In truth the pain is probably that after a week of people dropping dead... LIFE MOVED ON, probably by finding out why they all dropped dead.

Have you looked at the stats for the US circa 1933? There was a roughly comparable situation there, called the great depression. Given that the effects of the Black Death was to greatly increase both wages and employment options due to the huge numbers of dead people who suddenly were not working, accompanied by enormous deflation due to the large amount of assets that dead people held and needed to be sold to support survivors, that doesn't really hold up.

I'd suggest that you get disintegration due to the federal Government becoming an obstacle for recovery due to idiocy like the Feds insisting on formal EPA studies and Federal court approval before you burn the bodies of the dead, OSHA insisting on some sort of absurd and totally crippling legality and similar insane bureaucratic nonsense attempted to be enforced by rulebook fanatics.

The Great Depression began with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised import fees. It prompted a trade war with Europe, cutting off a great deal of international trade. At its height, the country had a 25% unemployment rate, which had dipped down to 18% by the start of WWII.

The situation, at the end of the Collapse, was much worse.

The recovery from the Black Death took a long time, up to a century after the plague itself happened. Yes, wages increased and the economy recovered, but in the immediate aftermath there was an economic contraction. Economic growth (seen, for example, in wages) didn't really emerge until the 1450's. And, though scanty labor played a part, so did other factors.

(Example: Monarchs and nobles meddled extensively in trade. With their power weakened in Western Europe, trade became more easily accomplished, and thus the economy grew.)

Wealth, in those days, was primarily tangible: gold, land, etc. Money nowadays is intangible, often existing as credit balances in bank accounts. (Banking, as such, didn't exist until long after the Black Death, and indeed seems to have been a consequence of it.)

But when those banks go belly-up, and the money itself is worthless, that makes it hard to get the economy moving. How can you buy an idle factory, when there's no money to buy it with, and the owner no longer exists (assuming it's a corporation)? (The answer, at the bottom of the first post, is "The Argentinean Model".)

To have trade, you need a person with money and a person with something to sell. There was no money (the dollar was worthless, so everyone had suddenly become very poor), and the companies that used to produce things had vanished.

In the post-collapse economy, the only liquid form of wealth readily available is fuel, food, and other supplies necessary for survival. Economic recovery begins with what is a fiat currency: assignable ration coupons. (Or, if you prefer, you can view it as money backed by commodities instead of gold or "full faith and credit".)

Each coupon is good for, say, a certain amount of food. If you have a surplus, due to saving or planting your own garden, you can assign the coupon to someone else for a chair they made. In this manner, people can begin to buy and sell things, and the economy can start to grow. But not at a rapid pace.

As for labor, modern jobs necessary for an industrial society require a lot of training. Not just anyone can, for example, operate a nuclear power plant or drive a semi or whatever. Retraining is possible, but it also takes time.

International trade was a big factor in economic recovery in the 1400's, but there is little to no international trade for years after the Collapse. The majority of economic growth depends on internal trade in the US.

The economy will recover, but not quickly (I assume it happens over a 20 year period). Indeed, my assumption is that 2032 (year the campaign starts) is the beginning of an economic upswing, were the hard work of recovery finally begins paying off.

And until the economy does recover, the government (at all levels) will find it hard to support a vast bureaucracy, even should they wish to do so.

Three point response:

1.) That's a good suggestion that I've considered. It's even plausible. (That is, depending on who is in charge, it could definitely happen. Government intervention in the economy may have deepened and lengthened the Great Depression, at least according to some historians.)

2.) It tracks with some of the source material I'm using for inspiration.

3.) But it's too political. Here's why:

I see Altered States as a technothriller campaign. (Techno-magicalthriller, technically.) Essentially, it's Tom Clancy, if he wrote novels set it the Sixth World.

The campaign will revolve around national conflicts, meta-human racial conflicts (Elf nation, a would-be Orc homeland), bleeding edge magical and technological innovations, secret agents, spies, terrorism, dealing with magical threats (e.g. insect spirits) and so forth. The PC's are a group of agents drawn from across North America, and instead of criminals who raid a Renraku gene lab, they're elite operatives who raid a Tir Tairngire airbase.

Technothrillers are seen as a right-wing form of literature. And adding in "the government caused everything" moves it even further to the right.

I don't like it when people jam politics into entertainment, and I don't want to do that with Altered States.

Again, your suggestion isn't a bad idea. I'm just wary of putting real-world politics in the campaign. "Tir vs. Aztlan vs. USA" is alright. "Government regulation caused the Long Depression" is too far.

You misunderstand my proposal. I'm not saying that the Federal Government policies caused the ensuing economic collapse. Instead the obvious crony capitalism and absurd bureaucratic reactions caused the collapse of the Federal Government. Essentially, everyone decided that they needed to do things and stopped listening to what the manics in DC were saying and DC had no ability to make people follow their directives. Once the usual attitude of the people towards the government becomes ridicule the goverment is doomed. Once people stop listening, stop paying taxes and the vast majority of (probably unpaid) honest federal employees decided to work with the people who were actually trying to fix the world instead of trying to pretend that it was still the same world the entire vast government falls apart. When a few armed EPA agent show up to enforce their absurd rules about wetlands in a wet spot in a farmers field the Sheriff has a body of armed deputies show up and convinces them to go away and stop bothering people in his county.

Without that you essentially have "and then the magic happens" between a massively powerful federal government running the country by decree under martial law and your desired endpoint of a federal goverment on the order of the articles of confederation. The government doesn't run out of money because it is the issuer of the money and has the legal power to make people accept it. What is the federal deficit this year? $2 trillion?

Given the timeline you are proposing and the general prevention of power grid collapse the internet would still work. Modern systems don't require constant attention to keep running and critical hardware has a MTBF of many years. And the vast majority of system admin can be done from home. That means people will have a vastly better idea of what is going on than in any previous crisis, even if they are hiding out in their houses for a moth or whatever. And if it is really stupid that will spread.

According to the information I've gathered (which may not be complete or perfect), there are indeed genetic resistances to specific diseases. Encyclopedia Brittanica: "Every animal species possesses some natural resistance to disease...Presumably, most causes of absolute resistance are genetically determined; it is possible [to have] two strains of rabbits, one highly susceptible to tuberculosis, the other highly resistant."

In the case of VITAS, an estimated 25% of the populace was highly resistant to the disease, to the extent they never caught it. I suppose its possible some actually contracted the disease, and it just failed to provoke the development of an allergy. It also makes sense that there is a percentage of the population that's highly susceptible, these would probably be chief among those who developed severe anaphylactic symptoms (and hence died).

I may be misunderstanding your point, though, please feel free to expand.

I guess it's a good thing that's not what I'm doing.

The struggle during the Collapse is between devolving into scattered local sovereignties or warring tribes (as happened in Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), or being able to hold the country together. China, for example, broke apart into several new countries, as did the US (i.e. the four NAN nations).

So, I'm not saying "society will inevitably dissolve". That's be a post-apocalyptic Shadowrun, not a technothriller Shadowrun.

(Which could be cool, just not what I'm doing right now.)

An epi-pen (or other medicines) will help those in anaphylactic shock. The problem is that they have multiple severe allergies, sometimes twenty or more, and encountering any of them will cause a myocardial infarction (blood supply to the heart cut off, part of it dies) or other lethal reaction. This could happen a dozen times a day or more, each time they encounter any one of their twenty or more allergens.

Yes, it might technically be possible to save someone with that many lethal allergies. But it would take enclosing them in a hypo-allergenic room for the rest of their life. That's expensive, and very hard to arrange for in the midst of the Collapse.

It would also require people to know what was going on. Which they didn't.

The exact mechanism of the disease didn't become clear for a year or two after the plague burned out. The name "VITAS" wasn't coined until 2 years after the pandemic began. During The Collapse, it was known as "the New Delhi Flu" or "the New Delhi Plague."

During the Collapse, no one knew what was happening. Or, at least, if some doctor or researcher did realize it, the information didn't get distributed very widely. Like AIDS in 1980, VITAS was a mystery.

That's what I assume. Specifically, moved on to Reclamation, trying to restore the economy and central government.

Resistant is not immunity...

I'm mostly on your side, not sure what kzt doesn't like about the numbers.

As for the allergies from what I read the allergens were varied and ranged from common to uncommon. IF you were allergic to plastic products good luck, but many people are allergic to latex and rarely run into the stuff.

Either way its ugly, but with a % not suffering, a % suffering only lightly and a % outright getting owned, I think your numbers are about correct, with 40% not making it (which I believe is cannon).

You're right. I overstated the case.

"Resistance" means that, if a normal person has a 50% chance of catching the virus (numbers totally made up) each time they encounter it, a susceptible person has a 99% chance of catching it, and a resistant person has a 1% chance of catching it. Not "it never happens", but "it's pretty damn rare".

(Plus, the susceptible person usually develops severe allergies, and the resistant person usually develops mild allergies.)

So, I agree with you on that. In my mind, the 25% number was, from the POV of 2032, an estimate (hard figures were difficult to arrange for) of how many people didn't come down with the virus. Subject to a lot of waffling either direction, errors in methodology, difficulties gathering data and what not.

That tracks with the information I've gathered. VITAS induces allergies, so uncommon allergies often become far more common.

The canon death toll is about 25%, but with no information about "secondary killers". Nor, so far as I've read, and acknowledgment that they would be a big factor.

I've prepared a spreadsheet with new numbers, using information from the 2010 US Census. In that, I assume a 20% kill rate for VITAS itself, and varying percentages of deaths from secondary effects based on how urbanized the area is. (Secondary effects including famine, dehydration, hypothermia, secondary epidemics, civil strife, and so forth.)

In the end, and by design, the total kill rate (for the US) is about 40%. It amounts to the same thing, but with more consideration for how difficult it was to survive the aftermath of the epidemic.

None of your posts have seemed hostile or condescending. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

I appreciate all the feedback in this thread, it's helped me to make the material more complete and more plausible. (And provoked me into doing a lot more research on a lot more topics.)

I would look into or write about what immunity vs resistance is.

I thought from what I read there were people who were completely uneffected by vitas, those who survived vitas but continue to be afflicted by the mild allergies it caused (I assume those with resistance either to it's effects or those who have relatively strong immunity to allergens), and those who suffered the full brunt (worst allergy effects).

I like what you're saying, and I think there's a good way to make it work. (And, it doesn't have to be black and white. Multiple elements can come into play.

--start file--

After the Red Days, the military returns to begin Reclamation. They get some areas stabilized, to ensure logistic support (food and fuel for the military) and begin protecting critical infrastructure. They even start the ration program, to buy and sell commodities with. This restarts a tiny part of the economy. The military begins to distribute food to stabilized areas.

Per the original Reclamation OpPlan, the military begins to hand administration duties over to local government or (where still operative) state governments. Governors and local cities are working together to feed the refugees from the large cities and re-establish order. The National Guard is helping move food and fuel around, garrisoning critical installations, and so forth. There are food reserves, waiting for refugees to be located and brought into one of the camps that have been established.

Things in a few places are looking up, especially in the protected bunkers/military bases in which reside the Cabinet, president, and other bureaucrats. The DHS and FEMA, under the aegis of the NIPP (the National Infrastructure Protection Plan) begin trying to take control of Reclamation from the military and local or state governments. Instead of "buying" supplies with ration coupons, they try and seize supplies. In many cases, even seizing property still occupied by its owners. FEMA begins issuing orders to locals, in the interests of "managing" the situation.

Their goal is to restore the national government (ensure that it is fed and fueled), so as better to be able govern the nation. People need the Federal bureaucracy, the argument goes. The counter-argument (coming from state and local governments) being:

"We don't need to give all our tiny surplus to reopen Federal buildings across the country, so the government can enforce OSHA regulations, fine people for violating FDA regulations by burning 'greenbelts' to cook food with and avoid freezing this winter, or whatever other damn thing you feel needs to be done. We're trying to prevent 100,000,000 people from starving or freezing to death this winter."

Both sides are sincere in their arguments, and think they're right. The conflict between the two causes no end of grief for everybody else involved (the military being especially pissed because it's their logistics chain being futzed with) and complaints flow towards Washington.

There's a meeting of the National Security Council. The SecDef and the JCS make the argument that DHS has no authority. The Reclamation rationing program is run by the military, under lawful auspices, and no civilian agency can simply take it over. The argument is heated, and at one point the president is rumored to have said “I’m not about to fuck up the one good thing we have going for us.” The decision goes against the DHS: goods bought, sold, or produced as part of the Emergency Military Supply Acquisition Program cannot be seized or commandeered by civilian agencies.

State and local officials are administering the EMSAP, on behalf of the military. From that point on, governors become very liberal with the definition of what, exactly, constitute such goods. Attempts by FEMA or DHS to seize pretty much anything are generally met with “I’m sorry, this land (vehicle, building, case of cola, pile of rubble) is part of the Emergency Military Supply Acquisition Program.” The military universally backs up such declarations.

--end of file--

This implements the essence of your idea, if not the exact details. And it makes sense, in context, and fits with the rest of the material.

That's not quite what happened during Reclamation. Even under martial law, the government didn't have control of most places in the country. There are five identified levels of control:

Unorganized Territory: No set governing authority. Possibly no stable population, or several groups vying for control. High chance of internecine violence. No aid, travel authorized only in heavily armed convoys. No authorization to establish control, unless mission-critical resources are present and authorization is granted by the officer in command. No rules of engagement.

Hostile Sovereignty: Extant governing authority of varying levels of hostility to NMC. Emergency aid permissible in crisis situations. No travel. No authorization to rationalize sovereignty or establish control, unless mission-critical resources are present and authorization is granted by NMC. RoE: armed response for self-defense only, or as needed to effect current mission.

Benign Sovereignty: Extant governing authority with history of cooperation with NMC. Aid permissible in severe emergencies only. No authorization to rationalize sovereignty, unless gross violations of applicable law is confirmed by unit commander and authorization is granted by NMC. RoE: armed response in self-defense only, or as needed to effect current mission, and then in such a manner as to minimize civilian casualties.

Reclamation Zone: Governing authority rationalized: Constitutional civilian authority functioning under applicable laws. Protection and aid on as-available, as-needed basis.

Secured Area: Temporary or permanent DoD base, or effective equivalent. Protection and logistic support on an as-needed basis.

So parts of the country are controlled, other parts under civilian authority, yet others by friendly, if questionable people, others by hostiles, and yet others are free-fire zones. Martial law might have been declared, but the military lacked the manpower and resources to garrison and govern the entire country.

In the long term, they can certainly get back into the business of printing money. (And, I'm assuming, do.) In the first couple of years post-Collapse, a lot prevents that.

And even after, those in power recognize that hyper-inflation (from printing massive amounts of currency) takes you into Weimar Republic Marks or Confederate Dollars territory. It'd be suicidal.

As for deficit spending, the banking system was destroyed, and is only slowly growing back (post NAN War, let's assume). There isn't anyone to buy government debt. And having the government buy its own debt, takes it back into Weimar territory. In 2016, there isn't a lot of room to maneuver, in terms of trying to support a bureaucracy without commensurate tax receipts.

I can buy all of that. Though given the short period of time that the pandemic was raging I'm unclear how you would lose control of any significant populated areas beyond the ability of state and local goverment to have general control. It's a lot easier to explain given a many months long pandemic, where people refused to enter the areas where it raged.

The counterpoint to the goverment falling apart is that the periods where the federal goverment has gained the most power have been these sorts of existential (or seemingly existential) crisis. The Civil War, the Great Depression, etc. However I think you are right, the combination of the effective bankruptcy of the US and many of the larger states would make it really hard for the Feds to do anything similar to FDR's mismash of programs. The US started the Great Depression with the total Federal Debt at about 20% of GDP. We ended the Great Depression at ~50% of GDP (1940). In late 2010 the Federal deficit was at ~95% of GDP. So post pandemic mid 2011 would seem like it might not be the greatest time to sell USG bonds. Hence government expenses need to be severely cut to get costs somehow related to income. Or so you would think. The other option is that doesn't happen and the economy melts down from the Feds trying to prop up AFSCME, Goldman Sachs and rest of the "too big to fail" crony capitalists.

When I do the second draft, I'll make sure to clarify that (among several other things).

That's the way I first set it up. 25% unaffected (didn't catch the disease or isolated), 40% who developed allergies with lethal reactions, 35% who developed allergies with mild or moderate reactions. (Though I'm changing that for the second draft.)

It's a good point. What you're talking about is, effectively, the length of time deaths are occurring (the "Red Days"), which is the time during which people are sequestering themselves to avoid catching the disease. By quarantining themselves, they contribute to the breakdown in industries and infrastructure but they save their lives and the lives of their families (they hope).

I agree that two weeks seems a bit short to cause a breakdown in civil order by itself. For the second draft, it may be a good idea to lengthen the time, perhaps to a month or so.

On the other hand, VITAS was just the first wave of sickness. Cholera, season flu, and other sicknesses followed it, effectively putting more pressure on society. And these are more traditional sicknesses, with people sidelined or needing care. Two weeks of VITAS, followed by sporadic and various epidemics, sporadic breakdown in infrastructure, economic collapse, and the breakdown in emergency and medical services could well be enough to cause the kind of chaos I'm looking at.

And if they decide to, who's buying? The international monetary system has collapsed, the Chinese are locked in a civil war, the stock market has cratered (making the rich much poorer), the banking system has collapsed (wiping out the savings of the middle class), inflation has destroyed the dollar (wiping out the savings of the middle class and making the rich much poorer), and they've just repudiated 13 trillion dollars of debt (crashing retirement accounts and savings bonds of people across the country, and destroying the nation's credit rating). Just to get the economy moving, they'll need a revalued currency (as Japan did with the nuyen).

Selling bonds depends on having a bond market to absorb them at rates you can pay. By 2011, the US government has a junk bond rating, and has to offer ridiculous rates to tempt anyone.

Yeah, deficit spending would seem to be off-limits for a long time.