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

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:I haven't re-read your theory in detail (I'm not even sure you unveiled it in full detail, for that matter), but I did mention "aliens dumping their trash at us", without specifying the nature and purpose of the "trash" (xenoforming, forward time travel, etc). "Alien trash" is also what the Roadside Picnic reference/link is about: in that book by the Strugatsky brothers (read it! now!), there are multiple Contaminated Zones around the globe, full of artifacts and hazards of alien origin. Some artifacts are obvious pieces of tech that can be put to scientific/technological use (Energy Cells, perpetual-motion devices, etc), others are hazards that can only be "useful" to the military (pools of goo, deadly "spiderwebs" or "jelly", etc), and some of the atrocities are so violent and unpredictable that your best bet as a "stalker" (harvester) is to avoid them altogether. A mental image of this pollution is that it's like trash left by aliens on their way through the galaxy (motor oil, cigarette butts, food leftovers, etc) -- not clearly a means to an invasion, but ominous enough just the same ("evil plot" or not, what difference does it make if it kills or alienates us all?). --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)
:I haven't re-read your theory in detail (I'm not even sure you unveiled it in full detail, for that matter), but I did mention "aliens dumping their trash at us", without specifying the nature and purpose of the "trash" (xenoforming, forward time travel, etc). "Alien trash" is also what the Roadside Picnic reference/link is about: in that book by the Strugatsky brothers (read it! now!), there are multiple Contaminated Zones around the globe, full of artifacts and hazards of alien origin. Some artifacts are obvious pieces of tech that can be put to scientific/technological use (Energy Cells, perpetual-motion devices, etc), others are hazards that can only be "useful" to the military (pools of goo, deadly "spiderwebs" or "jelly", etc), and some of the atrocities are so violent and unpredictable that your best bet as a "stalker" (harvester) is to avoid them altogether. A mental image of this pollution is that it's like trash left by aliens on their way through the galaxy (motor oil, cigarette butts, food leftovers, etc) -- not clearly a means to an invasion, but ominous enough just the same ("evil plot" or not, what difference does it make if it kills or alienates us all?). --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)
::But why use Earth as a dumping ground, when you have the vastness of space? That's just plain mean-spirited. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 02:59, 8 June 2020 (CEST)
::But why use Earth as a dumping ground, when you have the vastness of space? That's just plain mean-spirited. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 02:59, 8 June 2020 (CEST)
:::I'm not sure if your question pertains to the Strugatskys' Zones our Oni's. Why leave breadcrumbs around a picnic table, of all places -- is that what you're asking? The Strugatsky's aliens happened to pass Earth, and the artifacts are byproducts of their activity -- whether careless or intended, we do not know. There might be more in the vastness of space (as is revealed in other books by the Strugatskys), but on our particular "roadside" we have those particular piles of trash, no more, no less. Also, the aliens aren't "mean" in the homo sapiens sense, at least we have no idea whether they are or aren't mean: the aliens are long gone, and we only have their artifacts and their strange effects on us. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:03, 8 June 2020 (CEST)
:::In the case of Oni, the aliens aren't even space-roaming ones, they're visiting us through phase portals. Like in your SoW take, they're tethered to us through "Gaia" and such, and don't need to be a space-faring race at all. So, throwing trash our way comes quite naturally. I'm not saying that's what actually happens, just pointing out that they'd be "phase aliens" if anything, not "space aliens". --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:03, 8 June 2020 (CEST)
:::And if I'm completely missing it, and you are if fact saying that it's mean of the WCG to dump toxic waste into the Zones instead of sending it to the Moon or something -- getting tons of payload into high orbit has got to be costly, at least by conventional means. Of course as soon as Phase Tech allows teleportation, the first thing the WCG would try is make waste disappear -- but how well would that work, and what would it look like if it backfired? Possible explanation for the appearance of the Zones in the first place: instead of traveling to the Phase and staying there, the first "few" loads of NBC waste boomeranged back at the Earth and got scattered around the globe, and it took a while for the scientists to notice it. Possibly the toxicity/virulence of the waste was enhanced while traveling through the Phase, and perhaps some of it was Daodan-tainted in the process as well. Real-time brainstorming over. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:03, 8 June 2020 (CEST)
:Another recent point of mine -- that not all of the Contaminated Zones need to be identically (or homogeneously) polluted -- is also similar to Roadside Picnic (unintentionally so). It just occurred to me that there are many ways to pollute a restricted area, especially in a sci-fi-ready world such as Oni's. Even if the origin of the pollution is the same (Phase-related or not), it can always go in slightly different directions in two different Zones -- just look at the variety of ecological disasters in the modern world. Unless, of course, it's deliberate xenoforming of some kind -- in that case, indeed, there's a chance that all the Zones will look/behave more or less the same. Or if the pre-WCG countries have been secretly producing and dumping the same kind of waste for years prior to the Uprising -- that would work too.--[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)
:Another recent point of mine -- that not all of the Contaminated Zones need to be identically (or homogeneously) polluted -- is also similar to Roadside Picnic (unintentionally so). It just occurred to me that there are many ways to pollute a restricted area, especially in a sci-fi-ready world such as Oni's. Even if the origin of the pollution is the same (Phase-related or not), it can always go in slightly different directions in two different Zones -- just look at the variety of ecological disasters in the modern world. Unless, of course, it's deliberate xenoforming of some kind -- in that case, indeed, there's a chance that all the Zones will look/behave more or less the same. Or if the pre-WCG countries have been secretly producing and dumping the same kind of waste for years prior to the Uprising -- that would work too.--[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)
:One important difference between the TNZ perspective (so far) and SoW's is that in SoW the BioCrisis predates the Uprising, i.e., the Contaminated Zones (whatever they are) became a major concern before the Uprising (prompting it, even?), rather than a couple of years after. Indeed it's a bit tight to have the Uprising happen in 2012 (with the general public oblivious to the "air gone bad") and then in 2014 there are already ACCs everywhere, and the world outside them is poisonous (but the pollution is still "made easy to ignore" somehow? WTF). --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)
:One important difference between the TNZ perspective (so far) and SoW's is that in SoW the BioCrisis predates the Uprising, i.e., the Contaminated Zones (whatever they are) became a major concern before the Uprising (prompting it, even?), rather than a couple of years after. Indeed it's a bit tight to have the Uprising happen in 2012 (with the general public oblivious to the "air gone bad") and then in 2014 there are already ACCs everywhere, and the world outside them is poisonous (but the pollution is still "made easy to ignore" somehow? WTF). --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)