Trinity RPG - France & the Qin

[Arashi]

I have a question ...

Anyone got a clue why France isn't Terraformed to be re-inhabited?

Sure, The Wykoff blight can't just be terraformed, but France wasn't hit by much taint. So with Qin biotech terraforming Mars in a ridicoulous 70 years, it can't be very difficult making France a good habitat again.

Pro

1. A habitated nation france would be a less good staging ground for Abberants living there.

2. The UNO and mayor nations should have a moral obligation to help the French.

3. Would help the EU economy. With the Coalition, the Chromatics and the Abberants out there, I'd say most people see the advantage in more healthy people able to carry weapons they manufactured or bought themself.

4. Frech emigrants around the world (as mentioned in AuAu i got the impression there are quite much) would surely love to help rebuilding there homeland with money - as do African emigrants today.

5. A whole new market for your products. For the nation who secures the most influence it would be like Iraq for Halliburton, just without the need to wage a war beforehand.

Contra

1. Alien race terraforming Earth. I can imagine many people won't like that idea.

2. The infighting between the European Countrys. They sure wouldn't like to have China or Brazil rebuild France while they themself sit nearby and can do nothing because they don't have the resources.

What do you think?

[Alex Green]

It's often easier to start from scratch.

Can they teraform France? Sure they can.

Should they?

Problems:

1) Abbies and baseline terror types will try to stop them.

2) Teraforming an area will probably kill everyone who lives there now.

3) Teraforming an area might kill areas around that area.

4) I'm not sure what the problem is in France to begin with. I.e. does it really need to be teraformed or just developed? If there are problems, for example if radioactive material was dumped there, then Teraforming might be impossible, expensive, or undesireable.

[SkyLion]

I thought they didn't rebuild it because the Aeon Trinity wanted it to be lasting symbol of the the horror of the Aberrants. Like ground zero of the twin towers, it is meant as a memorial of terrorism.

[Finbar]

Actually, there is all of that radiation in the area. When it's thick enough to hide abbies, then it's pretty thick...

FR

[metaphysician]

Did they ever explain how France got so heavily irradiated? Crashing a space station, even a big one with lots of nuclear plants on it, wouldn't cover it. . .

[Alex Green]

Did they ever explain how France got so heavily irradiated? Crashing a space station, even a big one with lots of nuclear plants on it, wouldn't cover it. . .

Sorry but I disagree. A little radioactive contamination goes a long way, and it isn't so heavy in there that plants and even animals can't live. It's just heavy enough so that it's really unhealthy, that's like big hunks of land down wind of Chernoble (sp).

[metaphysician]

Even with Chernobyl, the hazard is exaggerated; OTOH, my mental image was "blasted nuclear wasteland", so it explains why the thing seemed somewhat out of proportion.

[Alex Green]

Inaddition to the radiation they also had the impact which was "nuke-ish". So they've had both things, and even from the same event, but from different sources.

The implication is that there could be burned out blast-ruins which have little or no radiation and untouched areas that are heavily contaminated.

[Arashi]

@Skylion: I think that is just a point to rebuild it. If the Americans would leave Ground Z as a smoking hole in the ground forever, it would be a sign that they accepted the terrorists supremacy. Only by rebuilding it as a memorial they can show strength and hope. Same with France in the Trinity era for me.

@Alex Green: Why do you think Terraforming would kill anyone living there? Or kill the surround areas?

I dont even think it would have to be really Terraformed (now that I think about it I must admit I have a really swampy impression what Terraforming is, seen from the technologic end). In the Why is France so fucked? threat I get the impression that the one big problem is the radioactivity.

With all the stuff done and reasearchend in the Trinity era (and with France and the Middel East radioactive wastelands ... ) I can't imagine there is no way to get rid of nuclear pollution. You just need something that clings fast to the Isotops (genetically engineered microbes for example), so that they will be washed out of the soil into the oceans and in a few years run the area should be - well not quite a Spa town, but far better and habitable without everyone getting cancer.

[Finbar]

I did sort of mention that the radiation is hiding Abbies...I think that would be a reason that the areas haven't been reclaimed...

Otherwise, just send in a couple of prowlers from the Tech Guide, and give it a dozen years or so...

FR

[Alex Green]

@Alex Green: Why do you think Terraforming would kill anyone living there? Or kill the surround areas?

Basically Star Trek 2.

[metaphysician]

Be fair, Star Trek 2 was an extreme case. Earth-based 'terraforming' mainly would involve reintroducing life forms to the area, starting with the hardiest and working your way up. Of course, if there's enough taint radiation in the area, could be that trying this would result in randomly mutated bacteria and lichen. . .

[Rorx]

Does anyone have any info on how big the Esperanza was?

I got the impression that it was like 1km long tops and presumably 2-300m wide/deep, but that is just what my mental image was (probably influenced by diagrams of O'Neil cylinders and the Eyrie from Passage through Shadow). That doesn't give a whole lot of material to have devasted such a large area as one entire country and regions of others.

I vaguely remember some comment in Shattered Europe about most of the physical damage being in the North of France, and that the South just went to pot from a breakdown of the government and infrastructure that was accelerated by bandits grabbing anything they could from the refugees, and simply the impact of the sheer volume of refugees moving into the area.

A large part of the problem of clearing up France is a manpower and organisational one. You have to go in there, take out or do deals with the bandits, locate and destroy the Aberrants, assisst the surviving communities and get them to link up. Once that is done you have a firmer and more secure basis for the actual clean up of the contaminated and devasted areas.

However, given that the Legion has problems with the bandits either overpowering the groups they send in or going to ground until they have moved on, it is going to take a much greater effort than anyone currently seems willing or able to devote to it.

[Alex Green]

Does anyone have any info on how big the Esperanza was?

My impression is it had hundreds to very low thousands of crew. Multiple landing bays, that sort of thing. Your mental image works pretty well.

That doesn't give a whole lot of material to have devasted such a large area as one entire country and regions of others.

Depends on how fast it came in. A 1km rock is more than enough to do really bad things to the earth, I think that early 20th century rock-nuke in Russia (1909?) was a lot smaller. Add to that radioactivity and you've got a problem.

it is going to take a much greater effort than anyone currently seems willing or able to devote to it.

Exactly. One of the big problems is the world is pretty poor, or was until recently pretty poor. Everyone has other priorities.

[SkyLion]

Basically Star Trek 2.

,,

Pure fantasy nonsense. Real terraforming is a long and arduous process involving the creation of the atmosphere, creation of topsoil, simple plants and then animals. It would take a LONG time and a LOT of science to transforma dustbowl into a lush paradise assuming the conditions were even right for that in the first place...

[metaphysician]

Unless you have high end nova superscience, then it takes a few seconds and one torpedo shaped device.

[Rorx]

Unless you have high end nova superscience, then it takes a few seconds and one torpedo shaped device.

Even with Novas it took longer than that. Wasn't that effectively what they were meant to have done to Ethiopia, turned it from a drought laden wasteland to a virtual paradise? That took at least a team or two of Novas and an unknown number of baselines months if not years.

Guess I'll have to dig my Aberrant books out sometime to check...

By the way, anyone know what happend to it during/after the Aberrant war? Did it remain as a lush 'garden of Eden' or did it turn into another wasteland - a tainted one this time? Since it would be on a scale of the area destroyed by the Wycoff (sp?) blast and hasn't been mentioned I assume it stayed a pretty good/productive area, and the fact that it was down to the good works of the Novas/Aberrants was quietly hushed up by Trinity.

[Alex Green]

By the way, anyone know what happend to it during/after the Aberrant war? Did it remain as a lush 'garden of Eden' or did it turn into another wasteland - a tainted one this time? Since it would be on a scale of the area destroyed by the Wycoff (sp?) blast and hasn't been mentioned I assume it stayed a pretty good/productive area, and the fact that it was down to the good works of the Novas/Aberrants was quietly hushed up by Trinity.

The area faced three big problems that would imply it fell apart.

1) It has lots of Novas around during a nova war.

2) One could assume it requires nova up keep. Even if the area isn't naturally a desert (and it probably is), it's easy to imagine extremly high levels of nova intervention would then require more nova intervention to fix whatever problems they introduced.

3) It's implied in the APG that a number of ecological novas hit Q6, maybe even Q8. *If* they didn't fight each other or humanity this would have been a good thing... but that's a big if, and this place was an obvious target.

[metaphysician]

Actually, I was kinda thinking "Limited Creation ex Nihilo" for my Terraforming Torpedo. . . *cough*

Anyway, I'm pretty sure Antaeus was slated to go bad, given he's already heavily tainted and possessing of an antisocial personality to begin with. Combine that with power already off the scale in 2008? I can totally believe that any terraformed landscape in Ethiopia, or elsewhere, got blasted in the crossfire, or deliberately turned into something hostile to humanity.

[Alex Green]

Yah, IMHO he's going to become one of the really scary ones. In 2010 or so he has Q6+... but probably not Q8+.

But in the APG he's used as an example in one of the powers that has a Q-min of Q8. So he's going to hit that, and he's going to get AT LEAST one more point of taint along the way.

With the kind of power he'll have he could snap his fingers and sterilize humanity.

[Rorx]

Haven't the Eden Novas offered to clear up the Wycoff Blight zone?

If so they could probably deal with at least the Aberrants and tainted soil/areas of the devastation caused by the Esperanza.

Having said that, if getting rid of the tainted soil was a good first start to cleansing the area in both regions then an Upeo with Selective Transmassion and a familiar or Anchorheaded spot out in space (perhaps close to the Sun, or in a different/unused system) could shift tons at a time in simple cube shapes.

Hang on, here's the maths. soil is about density 1.5g/cc for the sake of argument - rock would be more like 3? Which means that a cubic metre of either would be 1.5 and 3 metric tons respectively. For a minimum Psi 6 jumper that would be about 6/7 Psi pts per transfer.

At the normal recovery rate it will take 1 hr to get (6x0.4 =) 2.4 psi pts back, so about 3-4 hours to get all 6 pts back inorder to do it again. So in a 12 hour shift 1 jumper could do about 4 of those transfers. 4cubic metres a day per jumper doesn't sound to good given the vast area concerned.

If you up it to a Psi 8 then for the same 6 psi pts he is shifting 4.5 metric tons, so 3 cumets of soil per transfer and 4 per shift = 12cumets/day. Still pretty bad.

Add in a TEAR and your Psi 8 jumper is shifting 60 tons for his 6 psi pts, or 40cumets of soil per transfer, or 160 cumets per shift. It's still going to take a long time, but getting rid of the top metre or so of soil and replacing it with good stuff from elsewhere so that you can plant in a resilient plant life is a good first step. The clean life will process/circulate psi particles and that itself will help combat surrounding taint areas.

[Alex Green]

Problem is if our hundreds of thousands of tons of tainted soil were in one big clump so it could be teleported away then it could just be sealed in a mountain or something. The hard part about this is gathering it up, not getting rid of it after it's gathered up.

[Rorx]

Problem is if our hundreds of thousands of tons of tainted soil were in one big clump so it could be teleported away then it could just be sealed in a mountain or something. The hard part about this is gathering it up, not getting rid of it after it's gathered up.

I agree, but someone who is able to stand in a spot and 'port out a 1m deep, 4 m by 10m section, have a rest then do it again is a good start. Then you have to work out where you are going to get all the good soil to replace it from.

Doing this for France is going to be a lot easier than for the Blight zone in the FSA as it is in more small patches spread across (mainly) northern France. Although you'd probably need to do the same for the areas that are simply radioactive as well.

[metaphysician]

Problem for the Teleporter: that taint interferes with his teleportation.

[Alex Green]

I agree, but someone who is able to stand in a spot and 'port out a 1m deep, 4 m by 10m section, have a rest then do it again is a good start. Then you have to work out where you are going to get all the good soil to replace it from.

You have that kind of fine controll over the shape of the effect?

[Rorx]

You have that kind of fine controll over the shape of the effect?

The book says crude cube or sphere, but I wouldn't say that any cuboid was particularly difficult, and it's not as if you were trying to be precise when shifting dirt. At most I'd give a +1 difficulty on the Psi roll, and since it would be right in front of him to a known location, it would probably be the only difficulty.

[Rorx]

Problem for the Teleporter: that taint interferes with his teleportation.

True, but this is only tainted soil we are talking about, it's not going to have a high taint rating. In addition the effect on Psi is lower for higher Modes and Selective Transmassion is either Mode 4 or 5, and so should have basically zero penalty.

[Alex Green]

Still seems it'd be cheaper to use a bull dozer to get all the stuff into one place.

[Rorx]

Yeah a bulldozer and crew might be cheaper, except for all the people necessary to get them into the appropriate area of France and protect them while they piled it all up, and then had to wait for a jumper or a Nova to come shift it anyway.

On the other hand the jumper is one person in a suit, someone else can Transmit him to the right place, he does his business and then is summoned back until he has recovered to do his next bit.

[Alex Green]

OK, Point about defending him.

RE: 1m deep, 4 m by 10m section

Is that "meters" for all that? I.e. 40 square meters of top soil 1 meter down?

[Rorx]

Yep, 40 cubic metres, 40 square by 1 deep. For rock it's about half that.

[Alex Green]

Yep, 40 cubic metres, 40 square by 1 deep. For rock it's about half that.

And how much of your pool does it take to pull this off?

[metaphysician]

And how much of your pool does it take to pull this off?

Isn't that mostly a logistics issue? IIRC, even an empty psi pool fills in about an hour. . .

[Alex Green]

Acording to Goggle 1 acre = 4840 square yards

Assuming a square meter is a square yard (which it isn't but I'm being lazy), you'd need 121 of these scrappings per acre.

Hmm... let's just ask Goggle for some better units.

1 square mile = 2 589 988.11 square meters

So that's 65 thousand or so of these efforts per square mile.

So how many square miles are we talking about? A 50 mile square would be 2500.

[Rorx]

It depends on what Psi pts you give your people. I was assuming that the jumper used 6 psi pts and a TEAR for a Psi 8 jumper to get the 40 cubic metre we are currently discussing. If you go by the Core rules that just about wipes him out, if you go by the option in TPG, as I normally do, he can pull two of these before resting.

Recovery of Psi pts is once a hour you get to roll dice equal to the Psi pts spent, each success is a pt recovered. So you get roughly 0.4 of what you spent back an hour, about 3-4 hours to get everything back. ALternatively you can meditate - each 15 min you make a Meditation (Psi Recovery speciality applies) Roll at +1 difficulty (minimum, could be worse depending on your surroundings etc) and for each Extra success you get a psi pt back. So you need 3 success to recover 1 pt, which means a skill total of 8 - not that common amongst players I have seen. Most people just rely on the basic hourly rate.

Say about 10 per shift (assuming the TPG psi pool), so 6,500 shifts per square mile. If you could get hold of the people and biotech (unlikely) for 3 shifts a day that would be ~2,200 days or somewhere about 5-6 years per square mile!

You can see why people take notice when the Eden Novas say they will do it all, and I think replace the soil as well in less than a year from memory.

[Finbar]

I say just modify the Eden entity to feed on radiation; it should grow like kudzu. If need be, have it should the radiation to an organ that an abbie warper can take somewhere else. I mean, if you have the elements, why not take advantage of what you've got....

FR

[Alex Green]

You can see why people take notice when the Eden Novas say they will do it all, and I think replace the soil as well in less than a year from memory.

Looking at the math and resources needed, I'd certainly be impressed.

[SkyLion]

I say just modify the Eden entity to feed on radiation; it should grow like kudzu. If need be, have it should the radiation to an organ that an abbie warper can take somewhere else. I mean, if you have the elements, why not take advantage of what you've got....

FR

,,

Or somehow hire a powerful Edenite with q6 mastery of energy Absorbtion.....

[BlueNinja]

You're making the assumption that the Wycoff taint radiation acts similar to regular nuclear fallout. It is likely that it extends much deeper than one meter into the ground, especially closer to the original blast area. Also, something to consider is has the shape of the warped zone changed? Grown or shrunk? If it's stayed the same, you just have to worry about clean-up. If it's shrinking, you can sit back and wait, or possibly find out why it's shrinking and speed up the process. If it's growing ... you're in deep trouble. ::devil After all, if there's taint-warped plants, animals, and Abbies, why not taint-warped bacteria and viruses? Your attempt to "clean out" Nebraska might set of something like the Andromeda strain.

[Rorx]

Sort of true, and sort of not true.

Originally this was about clearing up the French areas of devastation, which are of a number of types, and frequently mixed. The majority will be relatively 'clean' i.e. radioactivity and blast from where fusion reactors and/or fissionable materials fell, bio/chemical where experimental or industrial agents of those types survived re-entry, and then there are the much fewer tainted areas.

If you are applying to the Wycoff Blight zone you do have lots of problems and some help. Problems include the Aberrants that are still living in the area and increasing the taint in some areas, especially in going deeper into the ground with their tunnel systems. This was why I added into one of the earlier entries an assumption of rock being about double the density of soil and so a jumper being able to shift about half the volume for the same Psi pts.

On the help side is a mention, either in the Core rules, or in Passage through Shadow that the vegetation on the edges of the zone are recovering and that untainted life forms seem to help encourage the regeneration of an area. I would suspect (based on theories proposed in TFR:Noetics) that the cycling of psion particles in the untainted life encourages movement of psion particles in the adjacent tainted area, and so eventually replenishes the free psion particles in those areas, unless there is an active presence to maintain or increase the taint - like an Aberrant.