A Prime Base Survivor

[cosmicfish]

Oh I can see a survivor or two. I just don't see them remaining sane.

One or two That would be a kill rate far, far beyond any known illness. And why would they go insane These are people selected for mental toughness, knowing the possibility of death, and with specific and trained responsibilities - if there were ANY survivors, why would they necessarily flip out before even taking the emergency steps to revive PB2 or send messages to the regional commanders or whatever I am not saying they wouldn't go insane, but I would expect that for a few days at least they would be able to hold it together long enough to take some productive steps.

There had to be contingency plans for the fall of PB. Remember that the Autonav was designed to be destroyed by one finger of one team member should it be necessary - the Project was full of safeguards. The fall of PB shouldn't assume that they didn't exist, there should be plausible reasons why the safeguards failed. And "the survivors all went insane" lacks that ring of plausibility to me.

[tsofian]

I am confused - only a fraction of the UA is tainted but it just happens to be the fraction that is used by all the members of PB And Krell decides that if his miniscule sampling of captured Project personnel didn't get it, that it must be at the national HQ Why would he assume that at all


I genuinely have no idea what you are saying here. If UA has to be tuned to the person and the disease by a skilled medic with specific gear, how is Krell using it as anything other than a straight poison at all

I'm not talking about UA at all. Let me refine this even more. The vaccine in question is a smallpox vaccine. Krell thought that everyone in the project would be vaccinated immediately prior to freezing. In this he was correct, but the lot of vaccine he contaminated was not used for that purpose, it was instead stockpiled at Prime Base. Against an engineered smallpox virus tests have shown that unless an additional dose of vaccine is adminstered either shortly before exposure or during the period in whcih profilaxis is effective the immune response is not strong enough to totally fight off the infection.

The Krell operatives infect any Morrow team members they capture with smallpox, knowing that at some point they may get lucky and the Project may uncork the tainted vaccine. This is exactly what happens at Prime Base.

Krell suspects this is Prime Base in Nevada but is not certain. He had enough reason to believe it was an important base to send substantial resources (the aggitators, the virus and a nuclear weapon-he can't have a whole lot of those laying about). He may have done similar things to other locations as well. That isn't stated one way or another in canon.

After all activity in the area ceases, and Krell can't be certain it was the virus, the nuke, a combination of both or something else entirely, he will be watchful. The area had substantial Morrow activity for a sustained period (months) and there were more active individual Morrow Project members than would be represented by a single team. This means either a combined Group or a base. No Krell operatives saw any typical field team vehicles even though they looked for them, so a base seemed more likely.

Even after the events in Nevada Krell is not certain that it was Prime Base. It could have been a regional base or something else. What is certain is that the wake up calls were not sent on time. The Krell intelligence organization believes that for some reason the location that should have sent out the recall notifications is non functional. It may be that the events in Nevada are related. It may be something entirely different.

So to sum this up
Krell attempted to wipe out the entire Project with tainted smallpox vaccine and failed
The vaccine was stockpiled at Prime Base
Krell, knowing that the vaccine might still be someplace routinely infected Morrow Project members thought likely to be in contact with numbers of other project members with smallpox. If there was no vaccine available they would become very ill an possibly die, and would possibly infect other project people. They would possible infect random survivors and lead to a legend (often retold by Krell operatives) that anyone wearing a Morrow Project uniform was a plague bearer and possibly the infected project members would get back to a base or THE BASE and trigger a mass vaccination with the tainted vaccine.
This was mostly an effort to make lemonaid out of lemons, since the original plan to wipe out the project in one fell swoop failed.

[cosmicfish]

First, and correct me if I am wrong on any of these, smallpox is not quickly spread through air or casual contact, but rather through the kind of skin-to-skin contact not normally found in a professional setting like PB. I don't see how it would spread through PB fast enough to prevent containment, or for the last person to be medicated before the first person died from the medication. Contagions like this could take months to spread through PB once introduced.

Second, I thought the more malignant forms that have close to 100% fatality were not distinct versions of the disease but rather variations in how people present, in which case untreated fatalities would still be less than 50%. Again, at the rate the disease would spread, they would probably stop any contaminated meds and take whatever survivors they could get.

I still have an issue with the contaminated stock just "happening" to wind up at PB. It just seems like a stretch that the Project would stock it, that the contamination would slip through their quality control, and that it would wind up at PB.

And why aren't we talking about UA Is there a reason that TMP would not use their deliberately designed trump card on this Especially once contaminated vaccine started killing people.

I am confused why Krell would necessarily think this was PB. Unless someone let something slip, could this not be a regional base, or a group, or something else How does he know so much about the Project that he can definitively characterize PB through such limited contact

I am not trying to be negative here, this was always one of the weak spots of the module and I am not sure that there is a good solution out there.

[mmartin798]

First, and correct me if I am wrong on any of these, smallpox is not quickly spread through air or casual contact, but rather through the kind of skin-to-skin contact not normally found in a professional setting like PB.

Smallpox is transmitted by airborne droplets from respiration and from contact with phlegm. This makes face to face contact within 6' the most common vector. Contaminated clothing and bedding is another vector.

As for the rest of your reply, I got lost is you are talking about canon or the proposed changes.

[tsofian]

First, and correct me if I am wrong on any of these, smallpox is not quickly spread through air or casual contact, but rather through the kind of skin-to-skin contact not normally found in a professional setting like PB. I don't see how it would spread through PB fast enough to prevent containment, or for the last person to be medicated before the first person died from the medication. Contagions like this could take months to spread through PB once introduced.

Second, I thought the more malignant forms that have close to 100% fatality were not distinct versions of the disease but rather variations in how people present, in which case untreated fatalities would still be less than 50%. Again, at the rate the disease would spread, they would probably stop any contaminated meds and take whatever survivors they could get.

I still have an issue with the contaminated stock just "happening" to wind up at PB. It just seems like a stretch that the Project would stock it, that the contamination would slip through their quality control, and that it would wind up at PB.

And why aren't we talking about UA Is there a reason that TMP would not use their deliberately designed trump card on this Especially once contaminated vaccine started killing people.

I am confused why Krell would necessarily think this was PB. Unless someone let something slip, could this not be a regional base, or a group, or something else How does he know so much about the Project that he can definitively characterize PB through such limited contact

I am not trying to be negative here, this was always one of the weak spots of the module and I am not sure that there is a good solution out there.

Here is the CDC basics page for Smallpox

https://mail.aol.com/webmail-std/en-us/suite

and here is wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox

[cosmicfish]

Smallpox is transmitted by airborne droplets from respiration and from contact with phlegm. This makes face to face contact within 6' the most common vector. Contaminated clothing and bedding is another vector.

Here is what I found from the CDC: (emphasis mine)

Transmission

Generally, direct and fairly prolonged face-to-face contact is required to spread smallpox from one person to another. Smallpox also can be spread through direct contact with infected bodily fluids or contaminated objects such as bedding or clothing. Rarely, smallpox has been spread by virus carried in the air in enclosed settings such as buildings, buses, and trains. Humans are the only natural hosts of variola. Smallpox is not known to be transmitted by insects or animals.
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox...ease-facts.asp

The "direct and fairly prolonged" makes it seem like it is not enough to have someone breathe on you once, and if that is the case it is going to take a while to spread.

As for the rest of your reply, I got lost is you are talking about canon or the proposed changes.

Both. I am saying that the canon fall of PB has always bugged me and that the proposed changes bug me for some of the same reasons: there should have been survivors, and they or else automatic safeguards should have revived the Project.

If I was rewriting Prime Base (or anything else in TMP), I would want or need to satisfy at least the following criteria:

• Prime Base must serve as the national headquarters for a reasonably distributed Project.
• Prime Base must remain reasonably intact.
• Everyone in PB must be either frozen indefinitely (for good reason!) or dead.
• All of the activation processes for the field teams and facilities must be have been stopped.
• The technology and science used to explain the fall of PB should be as consistent as possible with both the real world and the range of fictional discoveries and advancements available to the Project.
• The fall/delay of the Project should not be primarily due to incompetence on the part of the Project leadership or membership, but rather due to a combination of enemy action.
• "Luck", both good and bad, should be minimized.
• The circumstances of the fall of PB should not logically create undesirable or insurmountable problems for teams or the Project down the road.

The last few are problematic: Bioweapons capable of taking down PB so thoroughly would have tremendous consequences to the game and the game world. The 3ed PB ascribed ridiculously bad planning to the designers of the Project and to the Prime Base staff - there should have been a variety of fail safes to cover the loss or compromise of Prime Base and any back up, such that the "Great Deception" should have been just wiping the databases and letting the fail safes take over. Significant penetration of the Project by Krell agents should have far-reaching implications that would destroy the sleeping Project. Etc.

[tsofian]

First, and correct me if I am wrong on any of these, smallpox is not quickly spread through air or casual contact, but rather through the kind of skin-to-skin contact not normally found in a professional setting like PB. I don't see how it would spread through PB fast enough to prevent containment, or for the last person to be medicated before the first person died from the medication. Contagions like this could take months to spread through PB once introduced.

Second, I thought the more malignant forms that have close to 100% fatality were not distinct versions of the disease but rather variations in how people present, in which case untreated fatalities would still be less than 50%. Again, at the rate the disease would spread, they would probably stop any contaminated meds and take whatever survivors they could get.

I still have an issue with the contaminated stock just "happening" to wind up at PB. It just seems like a stretch that the Project would stock it, that the contamination would slip through their quality control, and that it would wind up at PB.

And why aren't we talking about UA Is there a reason that TMP would not use their deliberately designed trump card on this Especially once contaminated vaccine started killing people.

I am confused why Krell would necessarily think this was PB. Unless someone let something slip, could this not be a regional base, or a group, or something else How does he know so much about the Project that he can definitively characterize PB through such limited contact

I am not trying to be negative here, this was always one of the weak spots of the module and I am not sure that there is a good solution out there.

Here is the CDC basics page for Smallpox
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/disease/

and here is wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox

Here is the Wikipedia information on Prognosis
The overall case-fatality rate for ordinary-type smallpox is about 30 percent, but varies by pock distribution: ordinary type-confluent is fatal about 5075 percent of the time, ordinary-type semi-confluent about 2550 percent of the time, in cases where the rash is discrete the case-fatality rate is less than 10 percent. The overall fatality rate for children younger than 1 year of age is 4050 percent. Hemorrhagic and flat types have the highest fatality rates. The fatality rate for flat-type is 90 percent or greater and nearly 100 percent is observed in cases of hemorrhagic smallpox. The case-fatality rate for variola minor is 1 percent or less.[23] There is no evidence of chronic or recurrent infection with variola virus.[23]

In fatal cases of ordinary smallpox, death usually occurs between the tenth and sixteenth days of the illness. The cause of death from smallpox is not clear, but the infection is now known to involve multiple organs. Circulating immune complexes, overwhelming viremia, or an uncontrolled immune response may be contributing factors.[20] In early hemorrhagic smallpox, death occurs suddenly about six days after the fever develops. Cause of death in hemorrhagic cases involved heart failure, sometimes accompanied by pulmonary edema. In late hemorrhagic cases, high and sustained viremia, severe platelet loss and poor immune response were often cited as causes of death.[24] In flat smallpox modes of death are similar to those in burns, with loss of fluid, protein and electrolytes beyond the capacity of the body to replace or acquire, and fulminating sepsis.[45]

Here is Wikipedia information on the 1972 outbreak in what was then Yugoslavia

In early 1972, a 38-year-old Kosovo Albanian Muslim clergyman named Ibrahim Hoti, from Damnjane near Đakovica, Kosovo, Serbia, undertook the pilgrimage to Mecca. He also visited holy sites in Iraq, where there were known cases of smallpox. He returned home on February 15. The following morning he felt achy and tired, but attributed this to the long bus journey. Hoti soon realised that he had some kind of infection, but, after feeling feverish for a couple of days and developing a rash, he recovered - probably because he had been vaccinated two months earlier.

On March 3, Latif Musa, a thirty-year-old schoolteacher, who had just arrived in Đakovica to enroll at the local higher institute of education, fell ill. He had no known direct contacts with the clergyman, so he might have been infected by one of the clergyman's friends or relatives who visited him during his illness, or by passing the clergyman in the street.

Here is a good article on the airborne nature of the German outbreak in 1970
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2427800/

I will quote from its abstract
In a recent outbreak in Meschede, Federal Republic of Germany, detailed epidemiological studies have clearly indicated that 17 of the cases were infected by virus particles disseminated by air over a considerable distance within a single hospital building. Several features believed to be of importance in this unusual pattern of transmission were common to a similar outbreak in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1961 in which airborne transmission also occurred. These features include a source case with extensive rash and cough, low relative humidity in the hospital and air currents which caused rapid dissemination of the virus. While airborne transmission of this sort is rarely observed in smallpox outbreak, it is important to recognize that it may occur under certain circumstances.

From both the German 1970 and the Yugoslav 1972 outbreaks it is appearent that airborne transmission is entirely possible.

You say you don't see how it could spread through Prime Base in less then month and question why containment actions did not control it.

Smallpox is contained and controlled through vaccination. It is otherwise untreatable, except for supportive care. Since I am running "classic" TMP the events occured in a 1980s technology Prime Base. This means that the only way to detect smallpox is by culturing off an infected person, or off partical traps in the air system of the base. In either of these cases the Morrow bioweapons group would conclude that Smallpox was in the base and that it was possible the disease was spreading.

There are two good things about smallpox vaccinations-One is that a second vaccination after three to five years offers increased protection (From Wikipedia)

The antibodies induced by vaccinia vaccine are cross-protective for other orthopoxviruses, such as monkeypox, cowpox, and variola (smallpox) viruses. Neutralizing antibodies are detectable 10 days after first-time vaccination, and seven days after revaccination. Historically, the vaccine has been effective in preventing smallpox infection in 95 percent of those vaccinated.[41] Smallpox vaccination provides a high level of immunity for three to five years and decreasing immunity thereafter. If a person is vaccinated again later, immunity lasts even longer. Studies of smallpox cases in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s demonstrated that the fatality rate among persons vaccinated less than 10 years before exposure was 1.3 percent; it was 7 percent among those vaccinated 11 to 20 years prior, and 11 percent among those vaccinated 20 or more years prior to infection. By contrast, 52 percent of unvaccinated persons died.[42]

The other is that there is a window after exposure when Vaccination can offer protection from the disease (also off Wikipedia)

Smallpox vaccination within three days of exposure will prevent or significantly lessen the severity of smallpox symptoms in the vast majority of people. Vaccination four to seven days after exposure can offer some protection from disease or may modify the severity of disease.[41]

So a couple of Prime Base members return from the colony after having been exposed to Smallpox. They had been previously vaccinated but that protection was no longer at full strength or the massive amount of virus to which they were exposed simply overpowered their immune system. They become symptomatic with a fever and then a rash. The rash might well appear before the cultures taken when the fever developed had been finished and the disease identified. Either way the medical staff would not have taken any chances. Fighting smallpox was a well understood process. You vaccinate EVERYONE who might have been exposed. In this case that would be everyone in Prime Base. The vaccine has some limited side effects, so the risk of giving it to everyone is really far less then not.

The Project doesn't use the UA, because the have a specific vaccine for Smallpox. The UA might have been used for the Smallpox patients and it might or might not have worked (in this case it didn't). Also depending upon the type the lethality of smallpox can be nearly 100% (and in this case both patients died).

I think there i no stretch that the project would stock smallpox vaccine. Even in the 1980s there was a lot of chatter about Soviet bioweapons research. Smallpox was always one of the organisms of interest, right up there with anthrax (which cannot be contracted from an infected person).

There is some stretch that Prime base got the tainted lot, but I can live with that. It is a case of luck first favoring the Project-Krell's plan was to kill everyone in the Project during the first round of vaccinations but then coming around and punching the project in the nads. This isn't any less likely then a Confederate soldier dropping the plans for their invasion of the North, having those plans taken to the Union high command and then being ignored as purposeful misinformation. There are a lot of other points in history when events turned an a minor event, or a highly unlikely one

I doubt that the Project would run its own QA on medicines it was buying. They would be buying large amounts and most agencies just trust supplier QA results. There isn't really any reason not to. However if the contaminant was organomercury the test might only detect it as thimerosal, a mercury containing perservative commonly used in vaccines. Unless the assay was highly specific the amount might well go unnoticed.

Here is an article on how toxic the mercury is. A somewhat larger dose would act more quickly then the months it took in this case
http://stemed.unm.edu/PDFs/cd/CLASSR...ge_Science.pdf

It might also be possible that other compounds could be toxic is such small doses but also have a latency period as well.

[mmartin798]

You do make good arguments. The fall of PB did sound a bit contrived in canon and those Project members living there should not be dumb.

As for a disease that can kill 100% they might not be impossible, but likely difficult to pull off. A research project on aerosolized prions was able to get 100% fatality rates in mice.

http://www.upmc-cbn.org/report_archive/2011/cbnreport_01212011.html

This does not mean it can happen in humans, but it is a worrying study. Infection this way would probably not be person to person through the air, but some aerosol dispersal device could infect a crowd.

[tsofian]

Krell could have used prions to taint the vaccine. They wouldn't even show up in most assays

[mmartin798]

I doubt that the Project would run its own QA on medicines it was buying. They would be buying large amounts and most agencies just trust supplier QA results.

This may not be case. My sister works for a biotechnical company and they independently verify every reagent they receive. Even if they don't do the testing themselves, there would be tests.

I worked for a printer that supplied cartons and patient information inserts for a wide variety of drugs. We had to supply regular test results from independent labs that showed the inks, paper and box board met their standards for moisture, mold, chemical composition and contamination.

This does not preclude the possibility of someone contaminating the supplies after they come off the line, but it does make this much more difficult.

[tsofian]

Both. I am saying that the canon fall of PB has always bugged me and that the proposed changes bug me for some of the same reasons: there should have been survivors, and they or else automatic safeguards should have revived the Project.

If I was rewriting Prime Base (or anything else in TMP), I would want or need to satisfy at least the following criteria:

• Prime Base must serve as the national headquarters for a reasonably distributed Project.
• Prime Base must remain reasonably intact.
• Everyone in PB must be either frozen indefinitely (for good reason!) or dead.
• All of the activation processes for the field teams and facilities must be have been stopped.
• The technology and science used to explain the fall of PB should be as consistent as possible with both the real world and the range of fictional discoveries and advancements available to the Project.
• The fall/delay of the Project should not be primarily due to incompetence on the part of the Project leadership or membership, but rather due to a combination of enemy action.
• "Luck", both good and bad, should be minimized.
• The circumstances of the fall of PB should not logically create undesirable or insurmountable problems for teams or the Project down the road.

The last few are problematic: Bioweapons capable of taking down PB so thoroughly would have tremendous consequences to the game and the game world. The 3ed PB ascribed ridiculously bad planning to the designers of the Project and to the Prime Base staff - there should have been a variety of fail safes to cover the loss or compromise of Prime Base and any back up, such that the "Great Deception" should have been just wiping the databases and letting the fail safes take over. Significant penetration of the Project by Krell agents should have far-reaching implications that would destroy the sleeping Project. Etc.

I understand a lot of what you are saying and here are some comments.

Prime Base was, in canon, defeated by:
Their own over confidence and humanity (setting up the colony)
I can absolutely see the PB leadership deciding that things aren't so bad and that they HAVE to do something to help people. This might have even been the result of a psychological crisis within the base personnel. They had sat through the war and heard the pitiful cries for help over the radio. They had watched billions of people die without being able to lift a finger to help them. Now they see a very small number of people about to die right at their doorstep. The war is over. Conditions have begun to stabilize, certainly Prime Base has enough resources to at least help these few people. The base leadership may well have put this to a vote. The Project isn't a dictatorship. People who are desperate can make poor choices and with the information at hand this might not even have been a poor choice. I can see intelligent well meaning people being pushed to extremes when hearing that there are survivors in the immediate area.


Ignorance of Krell
I always felt that the Project had no idea Krell existed. To tell the truth I have never been convinced that Krell was a former TMP member. He could have been someone else entirely that stumbled onto the Project. In any case if Morrow had no idea that Krell and his minions are out there hunting them in particular they can't protect themselves from an unknown threat.

Technological limitations (particularly in classic TMP)
Detecting biological weapons is really hard, even today. I was a BIDS squad leader and here is some information on biodetection capabilities https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/190747-b.pdf. Crap the feds spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Biowatch and came up with exactly squat

[tsofian]

This may not be case. My sister works for a biotechnical company and they independently verify every reagent they receive. Even if they don't do the testing themselves, there would be tests.

I worked for a printer that supplied cartons and patient information inserts for a wide variety of drugs. We had to supply regular test results from independent labs that showed the inks, paper and box board met their standards for moisture, mold, chemical composition and contamination.

This does not preclude the possibility of someone contaminating the supplies after they come off the line, but it does make this much more difficult.

You are probably right there, in the 21st century. I'm not sure how much testing would have been done in the 1980s. Also, as I mentioned prions and certain chemicals might not show up. You can't find what you don't test for.

[ArmySGT.]

A typical biowarfare weapon isn't created to kill. The lethality is low because for specific reasons. The intent is to overwhelm the enemy infrastructure, to take their production and energy resources out or reduce their capacity significantly. Draining away medical resources and sending production workers home either ill or to care for someone ill instead. Most effective in the cold season when people are in close proximity most of their time.

That doesn't mean it wouldn't be possible to make a more lethal virus.. Krell and his people don't seem to have any moral hang ups about killing anyone just because it is expedient.

[tsofian]

I think the low mortality is an artifact of biology not the goal.


When the cold war ended the west found out how badly the Soviets had been cheating. A large percentage of their warheads were biologically almost all smallpox and anthrax. A Soviet defector anticipated massive mortality from urban areas hit with this combination

As mentioned a prion that has been weaponized is a terrifying prospect

[ArmySGT.]

Prions are misfolded proteins that trick the immune system into consuming healthy cells. The effect takes years.

Creutzfeldy-Jacob
Mad Cow
Chronic Wasting disease
Kuru

These are all prions.