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thoughts on the Wilderness and Daodan

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 '''''How many [[ACC|ACCs]] were there, and how many broken?'''''<br>
 :As far as we can tell, there were [[Quotes/Consoles#STURMANDERUNG_:_Tertiary_Stage|417]]. How many were destroyed? Konoko makes it [[Quotes/Speech#Outro_7|sound like all of them]] blew up when she sent that <s>leet haxor</s> random key-mashing signal out from Muro's base. However, that quote doesn't explicitly say that it was all of them. A more interesting answer for Oni 2's purposes is to say that some ACCs are still working or were easily repaired (besides, this isn't a Michael Bay film, not <u>everything</u> has to blow up). If most of one country's ACCs go offline, and the neighbor country has more working ACCs, you have a recipe for a burgeoning World War III.
+'''''What is the nature of the pollution? Where did the Wilderness come from?'''''<br>
+:Condensed from the [[BioCrisis]] page:
+:A. [[Pollution|Industrial pollution]]. It's made the life outside the reach of the ACCs toxic to us.
+:B. Pollution <u>from</u> the ACCs. Cleansing the air is bound to create some nasty by-products, at least with the kind of track record that humans have for creating solutions that create more problems.
+:C. Viruses. Perhaps someone recklessly created a bio-weapon that got out of control.
+:D. [[wikipedia:Virus#Genetic_change|Mutated viruses]]. Perhaps existing viruses were accidentally altered by the pollution and became more virulent.
+:E. Extraterrestrial origins. This is, in my opinion, strongly hinted at by the unusual nature of the Daodan as well as the Screaming Cells. The weapon page for the Screaming Cannon states: "This weapon fires capsules that release a mysterious entity known as a Screaming Cell. These creatures seem to exist out of Earth phase, but feed on human lifeforce and are drawn to it when freed". This doesn't mean that all of the Wilderness came from another planet or "dimension", but consider [http://carnage.bungie.org/oniforum/oni.forum.pl?read=17589 this post] by Hardy LeBel on our old forum. Quoting it here for posterity:
+{{Pullquote|Well, obviously I don't have much say over what happens next, but MY plan was to take Konoko and drop her into a "road warrior" setting, where small enclaves of society were huddling in atmospheric safe zones. Outside in the badlands Daodan warlords and enforcers ruled over the unfortunate masses.
+But to spice things up there was to be a much bigger problem: remember the phase technology that humanity has been developing? Well, it just so happens that the entities on the other side of the 'phase veil' had started to notice US. And since they feed on our lifeforce, they decide that the Earth looks a lot like a gigantic buffet. Think the Screaming Cannon entities were a bitch? Wait'll you saw their mother...}}
+:I daresay that most of us would have totally overlooked the phase technology that Hardy speaks of, but since he's drawn our attention to it, we can find mention of it in the form of the [[Quotes/Items#invis|Phase Cloak]] and the [[Quotes/Weapons#ph_stream|Phase Stream Projector.]] These items must have something in common that we should develop on in an Oni 2, but for now the main point we can draw from this is that, if the life in the Wilderness is extraterrestrial, it probably didn't land here in a meteor or UFO. It's probably coming through a "phase veil" from another time/place/universe. Fictional scientists have been known to accidentally open gates to worlds with dangerous life forms, so this is possibly what Hardy was thinking when he introduced phase technology. The interesting question is, If a scientist one day opened a portal to another world, and bad stuff came through, wouldn't he have closed it? Wouldn't it have eventually ceased functioning if the lab got overrun by ET wildlife? If so, is life continuing to come through the phase veil on its own, and by what means? Or is the spreading Wilderness simply reflecting the success that this foreign life that came from a single point of introduction is having in invading our biosphere and reproducing quickly?
 '''''How bad is the pollution and how is the world dealing with it?'''''<br>
-:Well, the tragedy of Jamie Kerr tells us that it's going to be deadly to live anywhere near those plants, and even when the ACCs were protecting the cities, the area outside the cities was the location of a desperate, [[Quotes/Consoles#BioCrisis|possibly losing]], battle against the Wilderness. So the hostile flora are going to spread with a vengeance. Some people may try to burn back the growth a la [[Nausicaa]], and eke out an existence. Many others will flee the areas that are no longer protected by ACCs. They would of course migrate to areas with working ACCs, and there would be a crush of immigrants; lots of fighting and ugliness.
+:Well, the tragedy of Jamie Kerr tells us that it's going to be deadly to live anywhere near those plants, and even when the ACCs were protecting the cities, the area outside the cities was the location of a desperate, [[Quotes/Consoles#BioCrisis|possibly losing]], battle against the Wilderness. So the hostile flora are going to spread with a vengeance.
+:A. Some people may try to burn back the growth a la [[Nausicaa]], and eke out an existence.
+:B. Many others will flee the areas that are no longer protected by ACCs. They would of course migrate to areas with working ACCs, and there would be a crush of immigrants; lots of fighting and ugliness.
+:C. A few may experiment with the Wilderness plants, performing Mendelian breeding and trying to get them to become compatible with Earth's life. See [[Oni2:Neo-Agriculture]].
+:D. The governments may be working on a biological weapon to kill the Wilderness.
+:E. Send it back to where it came from. As mentioned above, if there is a plant in the Wilderness that allows transportation through the phase veil, then perhaps there is a way to re-train this plant to target its brethren and send them back through the veil.
 '''''Does the general public get Chrysalises? How does society change?'''''<br>
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 :Dropping these terms here for now: [[wikipedia:Host_(biology)#Host_range|host range]], [[wikipedia:Okazaki_fragments|Okazaki fragments]], [[wikipedia:Tobacco_mosaic_virus|tobacco mosaic virus]], [[wikipedia:Mobilome|mobilome]].
-:'''Old text'''
+:Assuming that the Daodan is anything but animal, then it does not possess any intelligence. It may simply be accustomed to infecting other lifeforms in order to reproduce. However, because the Daodan is foreign to our biosphere, it proves lethal to our life, as do many other plants in the Wilderness. Jamie was killed by a plant that either defended itself with substances harmful to other Wilderness life that might try to eat it, or else it was just minding its own business, but it was highly inimical to human bodies. Think of how some people have allergies to pollen, and you realize that a totally foreign "flowering shrub" could very well kill someone without "meaning to".
-:Normally the Daodan lifeform is nonsentient and lethal, like the plant that killed Jamie, but when grown with human DNA in them, they become accustomed to it and can eventually be safely implanted in a human.
+:The only fact we have to go on with the Daodan is that it had to be grown along with human tissue in a controlled environment. Later, this Chrysalis was able to be implanted in Muro and Mai. So either Hasegawa and Kerr had to train the Daodan to get along with human DNA, or else there was no training needed and they were simply being cautious and ethical in trying to study the Daodan on tissue instead of real people.
-::But what do they look like, and what do they do out there? They could just be some flower or something, but it would be more interesting if they were more significant to the altered Wilderness, like the tree in [[Nausicaa]] (not to beat a parallel into the ground).
-::When I say "like the plant that killed Jamie", I'm not necessarily saying that very plant was the Daodan, but if it was, it sure would explain how Hasegawa discovered the Chrysalis. He was a logical man. Even in his grief, he might have thought to take a sample of the plant with him back to a lab, where he could analyze it and find an antidote so no one would ever die again. He would have found that the plant resisted all hostile pathogens, developing immunity almost instantly. This would have started his Daodan Project. (Cf. [[:Image:Dream_7_dying_Jamie.jpg|this image]] of the infected Jamie, who is displaying colored veins similar to the Imago effect seen in Muro and Barabas.) Eventually, Hasegawa found a way to introduce the Chrysalis, wherever it came from, into Muro, but only after much study and in a controlled environment. So even if that "flowering shrub" (as described in [[:Image:Dream 1 murder or mercy.jpg|this clipping]]) was the plant that yields the Chrysalis, it could be that the haphazard introduction into Jamie's body was too much for her to survive like Muro later would. Then again, she died by Hasegawa's gun, so we don't strictly know what would have become of her had that been the Daodan organism infecting her. Based on what we see later in the game, even if Hasegawa was mistaken in thinking she was going to die, he probably still inadvertently made a merciful decision by ending her life before the Daodan did what it was trying to do.
-'''''Where did the Wilderness come from?'''''<br>
+:One interesting question is how Hasegawa discovered the power of the Daodan organism.
+:A. Could it have been the plant that killed Jamie? Hasegawa was a man of science. Even in his grief, he would have thought to take a sample of the plant that killed Jamie back to a lab, where he could analyze it and find an antidote so no one else would have to die. He would have found that the plant resisted all hostile pathogens, developing immunity almost instantly. This would have started his Daodan Project. (Cf. [[:Image:Dream_7_dying_Jamie.jpg|this image]] of the infected Jamie, who is displaying colored veins similar to the Imago effect seen in Muro and Barabas.) Eventually, Hasegawa found a way to introduce the Chrysalis, wherever it came from, into Muro, but only after much study and in a controlled environment. So even if that "flowering shrub" (as described in [[:Image:Dream 1 murder or mercy.jpg|this clipping]]) was the plant that yields the Chrysalis, it could be that the haphazard introduction into Jamie's body was too much for her to survive like Muro later would. Then again, she died by Hasegawa's gun, so we don't strictly know what would have become of her had that been the Daodan organism infecting her.
+:B. Or was it serving some significant purpose in the Wilderness that drew Hasegawa'a attention to it? Think of the great trees in [[Nausicaa]]....
 '''''What ever happened to Dr. Hasegawa?'''''<br>