Oni2 talk:Truth Number Zero/Course Of Events: Difference between revisions

:::::::::::::::::::Indeed invoking [[wp:Vegetative_reproduction]] probably isn't any less arbitrary than not invoking it and relying on "slow enough" airborne contamination instead. I'm not sure why I am making such a fuss, probably you've just been dismissive earlier on and I overreacted. Currently I am quite comfortable with the notion that, at the time of Oni's events, the WCG simply don't see the "biological contamination" growing out of control in any foreseeable future, and therefore aren't trying ''too'' hard to contain it. If I am reading you right, the visceral danger would come from the Wilderness spreading "up" (up the trophic levels) rather than outwards -- and that, indeed, would only happen in the fenced-off Zones where the xeno-ecosystem is oldest and most dense. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 04:26, 29 July 2020 (CEST)

::::::::::::::::::::Right, my suggestion is that they really think it's under control, in terms of the observable Wilderness. Perhaps some atmospheric toxin levels are rising and they don't know why, but overall it seems like the Preserves are contained. They may even be doing a good enough job razing the bits of Wilderness which get outside the Preserves that they don't need to move the fences out year to year (paving a wide band of asphalt around the zones would probably help a lot with this). But then they make two discoveries during Oni 2: (1) foreign life is advancing up the trophic chain within the dark heart of the Preserves, and (2) the alien life is also moving upward literally. As xeno-insects have entered the Wilderness, they've begun climbing to the flyway that's been referred to as the "billion-bug highway" (see last bullet point [[Oni2:Slaves_of_War/Neo-Biology#Strange_behaviors|HERE]] for links). So now life is spreading way above any ability of the WCG to contain it, and new hotspots of Wilderness are springing up around the globe. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 18:31, 29 July 2020 (CEST)

::::::::::::::::Secondly, you're reading the manual's sentence too literally. The poor people who can't live within an ACC's main area of effect live in something like a shantytown outside city limits. The job that some of them have is going to work every day fighting against the spread of the BioCrisis. That doesn't mean the Wilderness is right outside the cities. It just means that they have a rough job and that they live on the edge of the habitable zone. I'm sure that "and" was really meant there. What the sentence doesn't tell us how far they commute to work each day. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 22:09, 27 July 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::::::::::Off-road commuting for hundreds of miles has to be the worst job ever, indeed. Your point is clear, and I don't think there is any radical disagreement here (if anything, I said there's some welcome food for thought). However, like for the airborne spreading, it all boils down to quantitative considerations VS qualitative ones. I am a scientist at heart and by trade, so yeah, I tend to: a) read that kind of stuff literally; b) favor basic logic and math over figures of speech. On the face of it, the manual says that there are people living at the edge of atmospheric-processed areas, with "dead air and foul water" right next door: settle any further out, and the toxic air/water will start causing gruesome diseases and birth defects (that's just what the "edge of the habitable zone" is, by definition). Seen that way, it makes total sense for the "reclamation teams" to be hard at work right outside the shantytowns, "beating back" the limits of their ''own'' habitat (as well as helping to preserve the air quality in an ACC's "main area of effect"). That said, if the actual source of the contamination is identified as being located far outside the city limits, rather than adjacent to the slums, then indeed it makes sense to have "commuters" who wander towards the Wilderness Preserves and stamp out whatever is causing the toxicity to spread (although I am not sure the term "reclamation teams" would be fitting for this kind of task -- they'd be more like "excisors", "surgeons", "foresters" or, yes, "stalkers"). My key point, if I may reiterate it, is that, if this latter "stalking" occupation is even more precarious than that of the reclamation teams (the ones that merely decontaminate the areas around the slums that they live in), then -- as I already said -- this supposed WPTF comes across as much more humble than the dignified TCTF (despite a supposedly comparable importance of the two initiatives), and it may not fit in too well with the idea that there's this big high-level conspiracy surrounding the Wilderness. It can work, but it will require some new statements: about the WCG's penal system, about the not-so-free circulation of people or information between the inner cities and the slums, etc. If, on the other hand, the Wilderness expands only marginally (vegetative reproduction?), and there is no need for daily monitoring by a "WPTF" (precarious or otherwise), then the sentence from the manual is just about "reclamation teams" that are decontaminating areas right outside the slums, and that's it. It can work either way, and I don't feel like I'm closing any doors at this point. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 17:09, 28 July 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::::::::::::See, that's why I hate the manual. It reminds us how stupid Oni can be ^_^ Seriously, though, there doesn't need to be a contradiction here. Is it clean oases in a toxic desert or vice-versa? The correct answer is: neither. There are areas of lethal toxicity (WPs), areas of inhabitable cleanliness (ACCs), and everywhere else there is a map with various degrees of toxicity (places where you wouldn't settle and raise children, but where you wouldn't instantly die the way Jamie did, either). Also, that "toxicity map" has probably been evolving over the decades (in 2014 the WCG only needed to keep people out of WPs, but by 2032 the trend may have shifted to keeping people ''in'' the cities instead). So in the end it's "up to us" how much of the manual we'd end up referencing, and to what part of Oni's history (and geography) we'd attribute it. As for an ACC's efficiency without a dome -- well, that's the elephant in the room, isn't it? I like to think that the ACCs really made a difference in the months/years that followed the Great Uprising (and that's how the WCG folks were able to sell their authority to the masses -- as effective crisis managers). But at the time of Oni's events the ACCs mostly looks like monuments to the WCG's proud past, barely able to keep up with the amplitude of the BioCrisis (and an easy target for Muro, too). --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 04:26, 29 July 2020 (CEST)

::::::::::::::::::::True, it needn't be a black-and-white matter of habitable vs. totally uninhabitable areas. And as far as the ACCs not being able to keep up as well with the pollutants anymore… remember to wear your Hapémask! --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 18:35, 29 July 2020 (CEST)

::::::::::It may seem naive of the WCG to think they can contain the Wilderness, but they might know full well that it's a losing battle. They also are taking steps to contain the growing Wilderness, but clearly they're losing since the toxins in the air are increasing, according to Oni. Also, to whatever degree they're wrong about how well they have it contained, that's our way of adding some drama to the story. Finding out that the trophic level of the Wilderness is advancing to herbivores, insectivores, and then carnivores will be an alarming development. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 21:01, 22 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::::The [[Quotes/Consoles#STURMANDERUNG_:_Secondary_Stage|increasing air toxicity]] is one of the most ambiguous parts of Oni canon. Not only does it involve the infamous "36.18% increase" of Dioxin levels, but it seemingly presents the toxin rise as a consequence of Muro's retrofitting of the ACCs. At no point are the WPs stated as a prominent source of airborne toxins in Oni's world: all we have is "biological contamination" encountered during flyovers, and the uncanny "virus" from Jamie's bush. Of course it doesn't mean that toxins don't emanate from the Contaminated Zones at all, but it doesn't establish the WPs as the planet's "toxic lungs", either. If anything, I'd blame a WCG-era toxin rise (pre-Muro) on imperfect waste processing procedures at the ACCs. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 23:47, 29 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::::::::(1) Where the hell is Hasegawa during Oni? (2) Why aren't there more symbiotes being made? How could Hasegawa's technology have been so far advanced that it hasn't been replicated over a decade later? (3) Who is Mukade? (4) Why did Muro say that Hasegawa envisioned a world where people choked on dead air and foul water, when his father seemed to want the opposite? (5) What is the nature of "phase technology"? (6) What exactly are the Screamers that came through the phase veil? (7) What is BGI? (8) What is in the Wilderness Preserves? (9) What is behind the BioCrisis?

::::::::::::::These are the major gaps that come to mind. The absence of Hasegawa and the seeming loss of Daodan knowledge are the two big ones. I'm not saying that you and I haven't proposed answers to these things already, but to pretend there's no big gaps in the story is just silly. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 00:58, 7 July 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::::::Specifically on what you said up there: indeed Griffin's "pet doctors" wouldn't be able to just go and google up Wilderness lifeforms from their Science Prison quarters. On the other hand, prisoners can't blab, so if there's any classified knowledge that can help in analyzing the Daodan, then there's nothing that's keeping the Directorate from sharing that information with Griffin's science team. However, if we adopt BGI as an important faction and the WCG's true response to Muro and STURMANDERUNG, then perhaps there isn't much interest in Daodan development at all -- Kerr&Co are supposed to cautiously experiment with Konoko, and then BGI will just crush Muro and the Strikers, shutting down STURMANDERUNG and leaving Griffin with no reason to keep Konoko alive. If that's what the WCG's game is, then indeed it makes sense if Daodan scientists are left in the black about the alien/Daodan nature of the Wilderness. And of course all of that is moot if no one at the time of Oni's events is actually aware of the subtle Daodan influence on WP plants, let alone of Diluvians being the source of that influence. The best kept secrets are ones that ''no one'' knows about. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 14:48, 5 July 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::::::As for whether Hasegawa and Kerr knew the truth -- I feel like we haven't even started debating how much those 2001 Bungie-made characters ''should'' have known about all that Diluvian business that ''we'' made up eons later ^_^ In my view, if you scrap the Diluvians ([[wp:Pierre-Simon_Laplace#I_had_no_need_of_that_hypothesis|Laplace-]] and [[wp:Occam's_razor|Occam]]-style), then there doesn't need to be ''any'' link or similarity ''at all'' between Hasegawa's Chrysalis research and the virulent pathogens from the Contaminated Zones (whether they're poisonous bushes, pools of goo, WMD payloads, etc) -- well, no link apart from how the Contaminated Zones have an ample store of threats that the Chrysalis is supposed to counter. If that's what the Wilderness is (nothing ''too'' special), then Hasegawa merely regards it as a versatile repository of "stress or harm" (and incidentally "the nightmare that killed Jamie", hence his quest for a palliative). If, however, some of the flora in the Zones ''is'' phase-enhanced, then it's something that Hasegawa may have identified during his preliminary research -- after which he would have naturally tried to emulate some of those symbiotic properties in his own experiments (like synthetic cell-sized organelles that allow a Daodan entity to "stay online" after a first contact with a human host). Whichever it is, and whether an ancient race of symbiotes has anything to do with it, I think we both agree that the Daodan entities that exalted Konoko and Muro are two distinct phase entities, and also quite distinct from the entity/entities that may be influencing WP flora through phase-induced mutation. Therefore it might make sense that neither Hasegawa not Kerr&Co have actually drawn much of a connection. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 14:48, 5 July 2020 (CEST)