A Prime Base Survivor

[tsofian]

Well he or they won't be alive when the Players get there, however

I find it hard to imaging an airborne disease that would infect EVERYBODY in a population of several hundred or several thousand and kill them ALL. Virgin field epidemics don't even do that. Even HIV had a statistical immune population. Anthrax might come close but even untreated anthrax isn't always fatal.

So there were probably a person or even a few people who were issued the suicide pills and waited until they felt very ill, as they were instructed to do, and never got sick. They may have ended up taking the pills anyway, because life in what amounted to a giant tomb where not only all the people they had known for years, but all their dreams and indeed the dreams of mankind had been brutally murdered would have to suck!

[ArmySGT.]

Well he or they won't be alive when the Players get there, however

I find it hard to imaging an airborne disease that would infect EVERYBODY in a population of several hundred or several thousand and kill them ALL. Virgin field epidemics don't even do that. Even HIV had a statistical immune population. Anthrax might come close but even untreated anthrax isn't always fatal.

So there were probably a person or even a few people who were issued the suicide pills and waited until they felt very ill, as they were instructed to do, and never got sick. They may have ended up taking the pills anyway, because life in what amounted to a giant tomb where not only all the people they had known for years, but all their dreams and indeed the dreams of mankind had been brutally murdered would have to suck!

I would still write everyone off as dead. Even with statistical probability, the chance is remote.

However, as I see it the personnel awake prior to the war and awake and recording through the conflict are not the Project command team.

These are the base caretakers. The ones that oversee day to day operations and would keep the lights on until year three. Then at year three an assessment would be made as to awaken the Command staff.

So in my scenario, it is the Command Staff and not the Pheonix team in cryosleep.

[cosmicfish]

I agree that there should have been survivors, and that survivors should have been able to take steps to revive the Project. I disagree that the kind of people chosen to be in PB would give up so easily, so how (other than suicide) could they have met an early-but-post-outbreak demise

[.45cultist]

You'd think that they might have used the automed's cryosleep on a few people in the hidden parts of the base. The infected are restricted to certain areas until the impromtu bolt hole is prepped, one is given sealed envelopes containing a briefing of events"just in case". Some personal gear stashed as well like the frozen watch.

[mmartin798]

The infected are restricted to certain areas until the impromtu bolt hole is prepped,

Therein lies the problem. If we assume the bioweapon works as described, they would not know who was infected until it was too late. So this saved person would very likely have the infection and it would live again when they were revived and kill the players. Even if they were immune, as the thread assumes, they could be a carrier and by never showing symptoms be froze and again bring the bioweapon back to the player team. Kind of brutal.

[.45cultist]

Make that two sets of autodocs, with the uninfected either in th vehicle bay or one of t he side tunnels. It takes some "Haid 'rangling", but a plausible source of new PC's is possible, and they know where thier personal effects are!

[cosmicfish]

Look at this from a different viewpoint: It is essential to the story that everyone in PB is killed but that the facility itself survives essentially intact. So starting from a blank slate, how do we kill PB

A biological agent would only work if the defensive measure was to preventively place everyone possible into cryosleep early on, and even then it would be a remarkable stroke of bad luck to keep awake only those who were susceptible. A chemical or radiological agent could be much more effective, but how does that get into a facility designed specifically to keep such things out

It seems impossible to me that PB could fall physically intact but with no survivors without either some element of internal betrayal or some level of Krell superscience. Does one of those sound particularly plausible, or is there some solution I am not seeing

[cosmicfish]

Make that two sets of autodocs, with the uninfected either in th vehicle bay or one of t he side tunnels. It takes some "Haid 'rangling", but a plausible source of new PC's is possible, and they know where thier personal effects are!

You are assuming that that these uninfected aren't carriers (and they almost certainly are) and ignoring that some of the "infected" should have survived to wake them up and reactivate the Project.

[.45cultist]

Look at this from a different viewpoint: It is essential to the story that everyone in PB is killed but that the facility itself survives essentially intact. So starting from a blank slate, how do we kill PB

A biological agent would only work if the defensive measure was to preventively place everyone possible into cryosleep early on, and even then it would be a remarkable stroke of bad luck to keep awake only those who were susceptible. A chemical or radiological agent could be much more effective, but how does that get into a facility designed specifically to keep such things out

It seems impossible to me that PB could fall physically intact but with no survivors without either some element of internal betrayal or some level of Krell superscience. Does one of those sound particularly plausible, or is there some solution I am not seeing

Yeah, PB should have HEPA Filters and CBR sensors in the air
circulation system. The module would work better if it was the backup mention briefly long ago in 3rd ed.

[.45cultist]

You are assuming that that these uninfected aren't carriers (and they almost certainly are) and ignoring that some of the "infected" should have survived to wake them up and reactivate the Project.

I meant some would have been placed in automeds while research and a possible cure sought. the other group would be any scouts or personnel manning LP/OPs.

[cosmicfish]

I meant some would have been placed in automeds while research and a possible cure sought. the other group would be any scouts or personnel manning LP/OPs.

I don't see how that really addresses any of the aforementioned issues. How can you be sure that they are uninfected And if they are, why not just put them in a decontaminated area of the base and have them keep working

And again, what about the infected ones who survive They get better and are never frozen... so why aren't they turning things back on and reactivating the Project

[dragoon500ly]

You have to go with a bio-weapon, possibly injected into the hostages that were taken when Pahute Place was overrun by Krell, you can theorize that two or more types were used so that there was a greater chance of spread, but then you run into the universal antidote issue, why didn't IT WORK!!!

[mikeo80]

You have to go with a bio-weapon, possibly injected into the hostages that were taken when Pahute Place was overrun by Krell, you can theorize that two or more types were used so that there was a greater chance of spread, but then you run into the universal antidote issue, why didn't IT WORK!!!

Here is an idea a group I was in toyed with. It seemed to make sense.

Krell was able to take several Morrow bases. Some where in those bases is UA. So, reverse engineer UA, you get Universal Poison. IN PB module, the symptoms were diverse. No two people had the same symptoms. It seems to work.

My $0.02

Mike

[mmartin798]

You have to go with a bio-weapon, possibly injected into the hostages that were taken when Pahute Place was overrun by Krell, you can theorize that two or more types were used so that there was a greater chance of spread, but then you run into the universal antidote issue, why didn't IT WORK!!!

Quite simply because it was overwhelmed. The bioweapon used was basically an aerosolized HIV strain on steroids. It essentially shut down the immune system of the victim and other benign diseases are now fatal. The Unidrug (as it is named in 4th ed) has to be tuned for the patient and the target germ. When they realized they needed to use the Unidrug, it was too late for most and what to tune it for becomes a problem, since the symptoms are of the other illnesses, not the bioweapon. So you cure the fatal cold, only to be killed by something looking like MRSA.

[cosmicfish]

You have to go with a bio-weapon

Why

but then you run into the universal antidote issue, why didn't IT WORK!!!

As that has already been addressed, I would point out that even with multiple diseases a 100% infection rate for that large a population is still very far-fetched. Most biowarfare agents have a modern mortality rate of around 50%, so even if you used 6 different such agents you would still expect 1 out of every 64 to survive even if everything worked perfectly.

The alternative, a superbug that kills 100%, seems really farfetched for an organization (Krell) that seems to advance through theft and not research. Heck, such a bug would be so deadly that an accidental release could literally kill everyone on the planet. Including Krell. Who would risk such a thing that had the skills to develop it