I'd say that the normal situation is that it's not worth it, but only in exceptional cases. And because the exceptions aren't too common, gangs can survive, as long as they abide by some unwritten "guidelines".
* The gangs don't touch anyone with actual power personally
* They cool it if election year is about security
* They don't go too far beyond the normal violence that the jaded masses of the Sixth World are accustomed to. Remember, the common drone watches Urban Brawl and Aztlaner bloodsports.
* More things like this

If they go beyond, someone will do something about it; a corp may do it, if it has public backing enough, and bribed some officials.



Ares probably makes a lot of money off sales to the police, so they don't want the world too safe either...

I would say that if a condition persists in Shadowrun (or pretty much anywhere else), it's either because it costs too much to change it, or someone is making money off of it. I think the slums tend to be mostly in the former category, but they also don't cost much (corps and govs don't even have to provide basic services) and they tend to pay back into the system, even if it is at a slower rate.

I think the biggest obstacle to dealing with a barrens area is first the system (whomever is calling the shots) would first have to admit the slums exist. "Admitting" in this context meaning having to do something about it; to confront the (meta)human cost of the slums in addition to the legal. People are in slums generally because they don't have anywhere else to go, if you level the slums you either have to eliminate all the people, or you will be creating refugees that are going to be a problem in other areas. Eliminating a slum and everyone in it would be on the level of a war crime, which is not to say it would never happen, just that it would be a Big Deal. That said:



I think it would have to start with a propaganda war. The general public would have to be made to believe that the presence of the slum was a clear and present danger to their safety. This wouldn't be undoable, since there are going to be dangerous elements in any slum, but the idea that the majority of people are just poor, SIN-less and trying to get by would have to be minimized.

Off the top of my head, I'd say the most likely avenues would be to claim terrorism, magical threats (toxics, bugs, or shedim), or an outbreak of a a contagious disease (VITAS-5, virulent HMHVV-strains, and so on). Once you can establish that the slum is a direct threat to everything around it, you can quarantine it (like Bug City) and then destroy it through whatever methods are most cost-effective.

I'd say it would not take a lot to make the general public fear the slums. One or two high-profile cases with a blonde innocent victim and it's open season on "dangerous criminals".

Unlike the Barrens most the the slums have things like power and water available. Unlike the Barrens, most of the population works in the actual city. A great example of this is Juarez.

The Rio police go in there all the time, leaving a trail of dead "civilians" behind them. This was unusual only because a chopper got shot down.

I would agree it would be enough to get the ball rolling, but at some point there is going to be a picture of a wounded ork woman craddling two babies as she is being gunned down by a stormtrooper-looking sec guard and then there's a whole nother public relations fiasco on the table.

Apropos of the above: Unwired makes a point of how prevalent citizen journalism is, what with all the live-blogging and many people recording everything they see and hear 24/7. Granted, a lot less of that going on in the Barrens but not entirely absent since, IIRC, even the cheapest commlinks have recording capability.

A RL example of this would be the protests in Iran last year, and the tumult in Bhurma a few years ago.

Gang problem? Sure, there are modern instances of gangs keeping cops scared and taking over city blocks. Well, the 1970s isn't really that modern.. but, yeah, its happened. But, if you think that some fancy ass bikers are going to be able to scare away strike teams directly backed by the world's leading weapons manufacturer, you're kidding yourself. Especially when the gangers in question are non-persons with absolutely no rights.

Step 1: A few Stormclouds flying around use optics to track gangers back to their strongholds.
Step 2: These strongholds are buzzed by UWB minidrones until every room and body in the place is accounted for.
Step 3: Appropriate action. My vote here goes toward percision artillery bombardment. Why risk valuable assets by actually going within miles of your target. (Oh, yeah. Ares makes artillery.)

It all comes down to what you mean by "fancy ass bikers," doesn't it? Read up on the capabilities of some of these gangs in canon material.

The Hell's Angels/Banditos fights in the 90s involved, among other weapons, anti-tank missiles.

1) SR3 Canon (notice the sticker on the thread; ares isn't involved here.) they did make quite short work of bug city though - so when motivated Ares is quite capable. Lonestar *IS NOT* Ares.

2) The economics of doing it make it not worth doing; moreover, why do they care? I-5 isn't exactly important corporate territory (C-D rated along most of the non-military stretch) and people in the 2060's mostly avoid going out any time of day (acid rain, etc. etc.) let alone at night, so except in situations where there's a particular VIP traveling through there's no reason for lonestar to spend any assets defending the highway.

And products get to Stuffershack stores etc how? Logistics is everything.

and the ancients only own the stretch overnight. last I checked shipping generally didn't go through there at that time =P

Really? I guess you don't drive on interstates at night very often?

I can't find the book that details what happened offhand, but I'm pretty sure this was almost entirely due to Strain III; a less-magical (where "not forced to always be astrally active" is the important line) target or an even slightly lower tolerance for collateral damage would eliminate the avenue they used.


This is an important detail. Lone Star is a major multinational; Ares is one of ten (eight, earlier in the decade) corporations that collectively control, according to Chromed Accountant, more resources than every other corporation in existence combined. Even with Ares, though, there's an assumption that the entire corporation acts with one will; this is in general not how large organizations work, and Corporate Download supports this (Ares Global Entertainment is described as locked in a quiet death-struggle with Ares Seattle, for example). A botched attempt at cleaning out the Barrens may result in heads rolling, not from public or governmental outcry, but from backstabbing from either rivals in other divisions or from subordinates who'd just love there to be some open positions they could be promoted into.

Low-VCR Riggers are cheap, which has two effects: first, there's no reason to believe that gangs won't be able to field some, creating issues with attempting to establish air superiority (we'll just quietly ignore game-breakers like SDW and B2M, because they break it in an unpredictable direction and it's broken anyway so it hardly matters). Second, it also means that together with some vehicle armor, shipments can make themselves targets that are difficult enough to not be worth consistently interfering with.

Beyond this there's also the fact that overland shipping would have to pass through countries that are indifferent at best and are generally portrayed with restrained hostility. Shipping is most likely to be in-city distribution to and from the docks and airport, not massive overland hauling like today.

Anyway, I just wanted to drop back into the thread, as my Lone Star review is going slowly but I was starting to feel uncomfortable about just ignoring developments in this thread while it progressed.

~J

Myself? not at all. but I live a significantly more urban life than most people in this thread do I'm sure. (which is part of why I live in a city that has good public transportation.)

in 2060, seattle happens to have pretty good public transportation too.

if you're asking generally? people avoid roads routinely all the time - if you knew it as common wisdom that a particular road was gang-controlled, you'd avoid it; especially since I-5 is mostly going through corporate areas that will be closing down by the early evening (5-8pm) and not overnight.

people avoiding it means fewer incidents over-time with SINners - fewer incidents over time with SINners means less outcry; less outcry means less incentive to waste assets trying to change the status quo.

Another note I found in NAGNA while doing some research on the Sons of Sauron:


Note that that's specifically terrorism, not counting the baseline of random violence.

A little farther up the page is another enlightening note:


~J

Almost all goods are shipped at nights because they have to be to meet the requirement to sell it the next day. Particularly with perishable goods.

That's why the highways are full of trucks at 3am, and all the truck stops operate all night. The product will get to the store by 5 or 6 am and will be on display by 7 or 8 am, so you can sell it all by closing time at 10pm.

With non perishables you do it that way anyway (arrival tends to be earlier, these are the trucks you see in the evening), because you need to sell the days worth of goods to free up space in the store to receive the next days worth of goods.

Given this basic logistical requirement to ship goods to supermarkets at night, the gangs cannot be allowed to control the roads at night, otherwise you won't be able to shop the next day.

Anyway, we live in a 24/7 society. If you think that gangs can be allowed to control major highways at any time for any length of time you've got to be joking.

So then the logical conclusion that remains is that the gangs are too powerful to be suppressed.

~J

"Logical" has no place when it comes to this (and other) parts of SR's background.

I think there are probably less perishable goods in SR though. Things we think of as normal (fresh bread, veggies, real meat) are considered luxuries in the system. (The difficulty in overland shipping may be part of the reason those things are considered luxuries, if we wanted it to be.)

Expounding on my earlier point (and this has been bouncing around in my head all day, and it at least partially responsible for me forgetting to pick up brussel sprouts at the grocery store), but I think a good example of this would probably be the early scenes in "Goodfellas", when they're talking baout how whenever they needed money, they'd go rip off a truck at the airport. The drivers were usually in on it ("in" in the sense they didn't want to get beat up or killed, and were compensated for it) and they weren't doing enough jobs to draw the ire of the big dogs-- in this case the Feds. (As opposed to later in the film when they stage a massive robbery and it turns out badly for them, even though the robbery itself is successful.)

A certain amount of loss is assumed. If the gangers are ripping off 1/10th of 1% of the trucks that go through their territory, that's probably not enough for the corps to send along LAV's and attack helicopters. But it's still probably enough for screamsheet hysteria along the lines of "Gangers Control the Highways". They might be staging running gun battles once or twice a month, but that will still be enough to give the general public the feeling that those stretches of freeway aren't safe.

This is just considering low worth commodities that come into (or out of) the city via truck. Gangers might steal a semi of nutrisoy now and again (this is probably how a lot of food makes its way into the barrens) and it's just considered part of the cost of doing business. (Particularly since if the barrens wasn't getting food somehow, they'd be more inclined to branch out from the barrens to get it. The basic needs have to be met somehow, or it does become a set up for revolt.) When valuable cargo is travelling by truck, that's when security measures get beefed up. (If a shipment of armaments is leaving the city, the corps probably will have attack helicopters in overwatch, and so on.)

indeed. the vast majority (80-90%) of the population has 'real' meat maybe two-three days a year, if that.

There's also plenty of ways to avoid highway shipment when you live in a port city and the vast majority of those who actually want fresh food all the time live at or near an area where a cargo helipad could be located - which reduces the number of entry points to that big corporate compound where the rich and famous live and work anyway.

[edit] especially when the highway in question is an international shipping line and not domestic; and would involve all of *that* extra red-tape too.

Your missing a big point here, everyone has family and friends you kill enough people and your Jane SecGuard ends up being the niece of someone on the board of Directors of Knight Errant.
Heat is a good example where they kill all three guards in the beginning. Once one of them was killed it was already a Murder rap so they didn't hesitate and killed guard 2 & 3. Its about weighing the risks,
if you kill no one your on the hook for theft maybe a few other misdemeanors. You kill someone your bringing down a lot of Heat. However if your already going to get the heat from one kill better not to have any eye witnesses. You still run the risk of killing the wrong person but honestly that is pretty minor unless your MO is killing all witnesses. Which boosts you up on the most wanted list anyway, your contacts wouldnt want to touch you with a 10 foot pole at that point.