OK, as best I can tell the first VITAS plague killed off 10-25% of the Earth's population (varies by region). Yeah, I know the awakening was a bit of a distraction... but it really seems to me that the impact of the plague is understated in the cannon material. Specific issues:

1. I would have thought the economic impact would have been much greater... the American Great Depression would have looked mild in comparison. Countries just lost a huge percentage of their consumers and producers. You would have had months on end with folks fearful to come to work. International trade and travel would have been tanked, and future customs controls woud have been hugely restrictive and anti-business, protectionism/self-sufficiency would have increased. Instead, it is presented as a minor blip, but not any better/worse in its impact then normal cyclical recessions.

2. As mentioned, I would have thought that international trade and travel would have virtually stopped as goverments tried to insulate themselves from the plague and future outbreaks by isolating themselves. As trade/travel openned up again a few years later the custom controls would have been vastly increased.

3. Culturely I would have expected a huge backlash against filth. Obsessive cleanliness, much like the obsessive frugality you saw in America in the 50s/60s by folks that lived through the Depression. Hospital chic. Personal bio-monitors common place. Run down sections of town would be seen as disease breeding grounds to be sanitized regardless of human cost.

4. The 2nd round of VITAS in the '20s, even though less devistating would have just enforced the idea that permenent changes had to be made to protect against future plagues.

5. I would have thought loosing one-in-ten to one-in-four of EVERYONE you knew would have led to a major religious revival.

Of all the things in the SR cannon, the VITAS plagues are the one thing I could never understand. If the plagues confined themselves to the 3rd world then I could see the low impact on government/corp/society... but if Germany (or any other country) lost 15% of their people they wouldn't have struggled with what to do about refugees for another 30 years... they would have started shooting them at the border no questions asked (especially if they were dirty and in poor health as refuges often are).

Pel

Actually, I would think it would spark major religious collapse.

How so? Disasters always propmpt religous revivals; religion is the main way hmanity deals with the unknown, and death en masse by a disease--by something that you can't see or taset or touch--is a damn big unknown. Many religions have some end-of-the-world prophecy, and many of them, particularly the Christians, include tales of plagues and wars and famine and death. Things like VITAS would fit in well with such religions.

I would see the aftermath of VITAS leading to a huge religious collapse. So your religion tells you that massive plagues mean the end of the world, and the Awakening happening at the same time is sending mosters and witchery your way to confirm that. You get it into your head that you're living through the End Times. What do you think 40 years later? Maybe you don't give up on your religion, but you and its other followers will probably modify it in some pretty dramatic ways.

That's not how humanity has behaved in the past. Look at what happened during the black plague, for example.

JaronK

It would sure help my religious convictions if after years of dismissing the mystics of my faith, they suddenly came out blasting powerbolts and flamethrower spells. Not all "hermetics" are pointy-headed intellectuals.

I'd also go with religious revival. If you understand it to be a change of the world, then just the emotions of having to deal with the unknown would promt religiousness. Look at times of war, for example. When the mortal coil doesn't look so tightly bound, lots of people turn to religion for stability. Sometimes tradition and faith are a crutch in a good sense for helping people find stability in unstable times.

OTOH, I see a lot of priests dying. Looking at multiple statistics of the Black Death, lots of priests died doing their duty. It's a massive pumping in new blood type of mechanism.

Don

Religiously speaking, Shadowrun has always had a major 'new age' sort of thing going on. Bear in mind that when you say, "plagues mean the end of the world, and so do monsters" what you are really saying is "many judeo-christian beliefs hold that plagues mean the end of the world." Granted, other religions have the end of the world motif going on, but very few of them cite plague as a major function of the apocalypse. Most leave it fairly up in the air for people to interpret as they see fit. Many religions don't even *have* an 'end of the world' clause to worry about - most buddhisms (and all major schools I know of), Shinto, the Tao, and most nativist/animist beliefs don't.

All that horrible stuff that happened, like VITAS, and the Ghost Dance and the awakening is my way of explaining why new agey stuff has such a strong hold on the populace of Shadowrun. And why Native American stuff has made such a strong revival. The Catholic church, from what I've read, seemed to have been hit pretty hard by the troubles.

One thing about VITAS is that while ~32.5% of the world's population died during it, it wasn't an even distribution. A lot of the people who died were poorer, and I'd expect it would have cut through the homeless and unemployed like a hot knife through butter. It might actually help national economies in some cases. Certainly, it would prevent the self-destruction of social security.

~J

*shrugs*

I just figured that people would be pretty pissed at a God who murders millions of people. Whatever, though. People are strange.

VITAS the first: religious revival. VITAS goes away, people dance in the streets.

VITAS the second: God has betrayed us all, if He even existed in the first place. Massive loss of faith.

~J

if you believed that god was killing everyone, wouldnt that make you more religous?

hell, if steve was shooting everyone and wanted a sandwich, id get him one incase it made him happy

If I believed God was killing everyone, I'd hate him more than I do now.

God and Steve are different people. Steve can be pleased with a sandwich. God seems to be an angry drunk who flies off the handle at a moment's notice.

Well, yeah. I don't believe in God either, but I hate the guy on principle.

Oh, that Steve. He's a card, that one.

It's complicated.

And I think VITAS is one of those things you aren't really supposed to think about. I mean, how does it even kill you, anyway? Toxic Allergy Syndrome? Does it make you allergic to stuff?

kittens.

It makes you allergic to everything and you die very painfully.

it would suck to be allergic to kittens, they're so adorable and fluffy

EDIT: ouch, being allergic to everything would suck pretty hard

at that point though youd want to die though

Ah, so it kills you like AIDs kills you.

More sudden. Imagine being allergic to your own cells or underwear. You strip it off, but the reaction is already abrest. Your lungs seize up and you die from contact to anything because your immune system has gone stark raving mad. Imagine large numbers of people collapsing because they only smelled the smoke from the smoking section of a restaurant.

That's VITAS.

Don

It may be that the allergic reaction even triggers in the absence of an allergen. Your immune system just goes that whacky.

~J

yes, it's pretty much exactly like AIDS, except for the part where they're nothing at all alike in any way, shape, form, or remote concept. with AIDS, you stop having an immune system, and some random disease comes along and reenacts the invasion of Iraq, with you playing the part of the Iraqis. with VITAS, your immune systems suddenly decides that your entire body is one massive infection, and rips you apart cell-by-cell.

Hmm? I never thought of it that way... What if theoretically your immune system was down or ceased to function, such as if you had AIDS?

i'm not sure i understand the question. if your immune system shuts down, as if you had AIDS, you'd die the same way people with AIDS eventually die: you'd catch a cold, never get over it, and keel over.

I think he's asking what would happen if you had advanced AIDS and caught VITAS.

Which is an interesting question, but you'd be dead soon regardless of the answer.

~J

EDIT: Kage beat me to it.

Ironically, I think by it's nature VITAS may kill the AIDS virus..

If there is a single cell to produce more white blood cells, VITAS would probably win out as the more potent disease. It may even be a lab mistake from the research that led to the cure for AIDS. Or an intentional variation of the same.

Virally Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome. At least from my perspective it would seem that VITAS would make you deathly allergic to the toxins, aka pollution, already present in the enviroment, but that your body is able to tolerate. This would explain why it killed mostly the poor and was so deadly in more polluted cities such as Mexico City. The one flaw to this theory is that supposedly VITAS killed both rich and poor, but if a wealthy person caught VITAS, according to my interpration a wealthy person could just flee to a wilderness or a corporate clean enviroment and survive. On the other hand maybe allergy VITAS would be so severe that no where on modern earth would be clean enough to allow a human to survive, or perhaps it would have enough to act on the pollutants already present in the victim before they became infected

If it just reacts to allergens, treatment would be (relatively) inexpensive; a clean room and a decontamination shower.

If the immune system doesn't need a trigger other than the virus, you'd treat with boatloads of immunosuppressive drugs. Like what they do after organ transplants, for instance, but much more so. Still in a clean room, since while you're being treated you might as well have advanced (if temporary) AIDS.

~J

Then the aforementioned drug treatments instead of the clean room and decon shower.

I still like the idea of the virus sending the immune system berserk without needing anything else, but that could just be me.

~J

You can combine both views. Perhaps VITAS victims die from their immune system going into overdrive at the cellular level, but the sequence has to be triggered by common allergens or certain substances (with each patient having different "neutral" substances). Decontamination or drugs wouldn't help as they only act on the catalyst, and what is killing you is the rioting of your cells. This would explain the long painful death, which sounds similar to what Ebola victims have to endure - there are graphic descriptions of what Ebola does to the human body in one of the Tom Clancy novels (Executive Orders I think).

In theory you could still survive VITAS if you were placed permanently in a sterilized environment before any allergens ruined your day (Bubble Boy, anyone ?). It would make for a challenging run to extract a VITAS-infected researcher or millionaire from a sterilized facility - without killing the target or the runners.