Intergalactic Summit

Considering the virulence and lethality of the Kyonoke speck, I'd really be surprised if there was anyone in those places left alive. And, if they are, it's not like they could move safely to reach supplies.

Also, sending supplies means opening defenses, however briefly, which means risking letting the contamination spread.

We're in a plague scenario. Kindness ... I really like kind people, and I try not to be awful to people myself. In a case like this, though....

It could bury us all.


Edit:

Although, if we DO confirm someone is alive, it's probably worth a good deal of trouble and risk to keep them that way, so that we can, by some means or other, ask: "How come you're not dead?"

Uh ... maybe kind of, but I think you're playing it in terms of people's motivations rather than the reasons.

One thing I'd like to respectfully mention, Ms. Sung: talking about something like "mystical reputation" makes it sound like an urban legend. It isn't one. It's a real thing with really anomalous and scary characteristics, including breaching environment suits. It's already bypassed a couple smaller-scale quarantines on its way to our current apparently-stable situation.

It's pretty important not to understate how deadly this stuff is. At this point, arguments based in dispassionate threat analysis can be hard to distinguish from arguments founded in irrational fear and panic. Given places like the Federation where public sentiment can have a lot of sway over the course of events, it's going to be a little important to control public perceptions.

If they start to think the threat's being overstated and the authorities are being needlessly cruel out of cowardice ... well. We're already maybe seeing a little of what will happen.

Passing an unmanned cargo drone is still passing something, Miz. In the case of self-contained orbital facilities, maybe that's doable without risk. In the case of a planetary city, though ... (I admit that's mostly what I was thinking of) ... or of a few sealed decks on an otherwise-unaffected station....

I just meant in the sense that you brought up the notion of "Maybe it would be a bad idea to open the doors even for a minute", as an explanation re: the apparent starving of the city population, which other people seemed to be overlooking. You did frame it as logical rather than emotional, though I'll comment I never said it was an unjust state of terror!

Neither did I say that said mystical reputation was unfairly earned. Hopefully anyone reading didn't take me as downplaying the legitimately (at present) inexplicable properties of the pathogen, and the threat it represents.

However, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the plague has sort of come to be viewed as a sort of unstoppable, pseudo-divine force like a pandemic of yore, and not a problem to be reasonably solved. Which is stupid. It isn't a problem yet, but excessive caution in dealing with it could eventually become crippling.

It might be a technical problem. Do you know what the characteristics of a "nanoshield" are, Miz? 'Cause I don't.

There's a probably quite dead city on one side of this one, and a whole planetary population on the other, so I think they're going to be reluctant to do anything that requires them to, oh, say, switch it off, even briefly.

Always a possibility, but it sounds more like an excuse to cave to cowardice to me. If there are people still alive in there, they've damn well earned a fighting chance.

Apparently not, according to the latest release the SoCT has begun "genetic research on the latest strain of Kyonoke, in an attempt to "either create a vaccine, or an inhibitor with the intention of limiting the spread of the deadly pathogen"."

Genetic research. On a prion.

Apparently the reports of it being even remotely related to a prion disease was nonsense, or this report is nonsense, or...

Spirits below, is there really nothing reported on this damned travesty that can be taken at face value? There's so much disinformation, intentional or not, that you almost have to assume it's intentional.

Oh, dear. Okay.

Uh ... going to indulge in a bit of wild speculation, now.

Let's set aside the possibility of this being some Ancient-created nano-plague with some components (like nanite factories) we're not being told about. 'Cause if Ancient tech is actively involved, it might have properties that may as well be magic. To this day we don't completely understand the principles behind some of the reverse-engineered stuff we use daily. The example I know of for sure is Talocan shield emitters; it's where the Caldari got a lot of their shield tech. We know how to build them, but not, on a deep level, why they work.

Let's leave all that out.

So ... the Kyonoke speck has two configurations we know of: a virus-like "advanced" configuration and a prion-like "basic" configuration. Let's assume for now that these really are the only two forms.

What if ... the Kyonoke speck's advanced form really is a virus? As in, full-fledged quasi-microorganism that invades cells and repurposes them to make more of itself. Exactly what we think of as a virus. This virus, like any virus, is subject to mutation. It also has a limited lifespan, and doesn't stick around for all that long outside a host.

Only: in addition to viral structures, cells infected with advanced Kyonoke also produce the "basic" Kyonoke prion.

Basic Kyonoke prions act mostly like normal prions. They're highly stable, can lurk just about anywhere indefinitely, and take much longer to cause disease. Only-- what if "basic" Kyonoke prions can latch on or wedge into DNA strands (which are, themselves, proteins, after all) and set the cell up to make advanced Kyonoke?

If we assume that the prions will eventually break down an unusually wide variety of protein structures into more prions, which then either individually or in some numbers have very limited but not statistically-insignificant odds of creating an advanced-form spawning cell, a situation might arise in which the odds of generating an advanced-form infection approach certainty.

Thus, the two forms aren't matters of a single speck having two configurations, but of a single "species" of disease producing two types of pathogen.

(Still doesn't explain the ability to bypass airtight seals, though.)

This would also mean that there really is a genetic code to study-- it just exists only in advanced Kyonoke.

Thoughts?


Edit:

Also-- could "advanced" Kyonoke either carry or break up into "basic" Kyonoke when it dies?

The disinformation, lack of information and general unwillingness to provide even the slightest of information that could allow the significant resources of capsuleer researchers and the countless baseliner employees we can leverage to provide this sort of help is starting to grate.

We are weeks into this situation and every damn one of our governments are clamming up to the point where it's damn near starting to look malicious. I swear by every spirit, soul and place I hold dear someone will die over this if it turns out their greed and power mongering is putting my people further at risk through this campaign of information blackout.

Solitude being a tad far from Muttokon, and separated by multiple logistical nightmare systems at that, the apparently inept Republic government had better start showing they are doing something beyond just sitting on a Kyonoke bomb waiting for it to go off, or people are going to start taking matters into their own hands and surgically cut off from such things, we capsuleers can't even help stop that from happening.

That this situation isn't a result of either massive incompetence or outright malice is starting to become a serious stretch at this point.

Edit: @Aria

All too possible, all too impossible to test and falsify without a damn sight more information. I'd rather not speculate too much about such doomsday scenarios when we have a demonstrable history of corrupt, power hungry and outright malicious governments not acting in our people's interests to begin with.

Either way, we're sitting here with our thumbs up our arses without the information needed to do anything we weren't already doing weeks and weeks ago and that was wearing thin already then.

Your naivete is endearing but in this case rather limiting. Every last one of our governments have a history of significant malice and underhandedness. The RSS has a fairly nasty history, the Federation's ugly underside has surfaced quite a few times even just in our careers as capsuleers, the State's Megacorporations and its culture is a prime example of one where sacrificing "for the greater good", i.e. more money and power to shareholders is common and given the Empire's willingness to inflict horror, slavery and destruction upon entire nations when it can I somewhat doubt they're above such things.

Yes, it most certainly scans that all these governments are more than willing and able to suppress information for as long as possible while trying to gain as much as possible in terms of bioweapon data and more. So far, the SoCT seems to be the only ones willing to part with even a fraction of the information they gather.

The simple fact of the matter is that they're not even willing to release information on whether or not there's survivors left in those sites, or any other of the countless pieces of information related to this situation that would pose absolutely zero danger to anyone.

You'll have to forgive me, but blind obedience towards those who have in the past proven more than once that they are more than capable of malicious intent is morally and ethically abhorrent to me. If they want me obedient and loyal, they have to damn well earn it.