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?

[.45cultist]

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?

Automeds can serve as cryotubes, saving a patient for later treatment. One batch is waiting for a cure, the other is frozen for their protection without contact with other PB personnel. The rest need a reason the airborne plague spread. What if protocols were skipped while the hostage situation was ongoing? but still some would escape illness. Still have a problem.....

[.45cultist]

Why?


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?

The Soviet/Russian labs didn't/do not try to weaponize anything with a cure.

[cosmicfish]

Automeds can serve as cryotubes, saving a patient for later treatment. One batch is waiting for a cure, the other is frozen for their protection without contact with other PB personnel. The rest need a reason the airborne plague spread. What if protocols were skipped while the hostage situation was ongoing? but still some would escape illness. Still have a problem.....
And that problem is why I was asking what this solved - even if some infected were frozen or if somehow there were people in the tight confines of PB who were unexposed (how??) then all that does is create more frozen people to be recovered, some of whom are likely to die and still lethally contagious if thawed without the right protocols. There should still be unfrozen survivors of the original infection.

Heck, if there uncontaminated people, why are they frozen and not suited up and operating out of decontaminated area? They could be decontaminating the base and sweeping out all the bodies or at least playing dead til the threat had passed and then waking up PB2 or the regional bases!

[cosmicfish]

The Soviet/Russian labs didn't/do not try to weaponize anything with a cure.
There is a big difference between "disease without a cure" and "disease with a 100% infection and fatality rate". Most bioweapons lack a cure, just a set of procedures that can reduce mortality, but no one, not even the Russians, has a 100% lethal bioweapon. There would be no way to deploy it where there wasn't a significant chance of killing all human life, including the designers and deployers and the guys who said to do it.

[.45cultist]

And that problem is why I was asking what this solved - even if some infected were frozen or if somehow there were people in the tight confines of PB who were unexposed (how??) then all that does is create more frozen people to be recovered, some of whom are likely to die and still lethally contagious if thawed without the right protocols. There should still be unfrozen survivors of the original infection.

Heck, if there uncontaminated people, why are they frozen and not suited up and operating out of decontaminated area? They could be decontaminating the base and sweeping out all the bodies or at least playing dead til the threat had passed and then waking up PB2 or the regional bases!

The infected would have charts and be in a medbay, non infected might be wired into the recall system since they are sealed in the automeds and infected could then approach. If we were close with scratch paper to sketch, I could probably explain better. This is good to work out details, I wish I didn't flub my explainations.

[ArmySGT.]

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?


PB needs to be killed for the 150 year delay..... but, does it have to be intact?

Can't it be permanently offline with a gutted ops cylinder?

A few clues and the PCs are off to find PB2 or the highest ranking Regional base commander.

[cosmicfish]

The infected would have charts and be in a medbay, non infected might be wired into the recall system since they are sealed in the automeds and infected could then approach. If we were close with scratch paper to sketch, I could probably explain better. This is good to work out details, I wish I didn't flub my explainations.
Okay, this adds flavor but doesn't address any of the core issues here - any bioweapon attack should leave survivors capable of reviving the Project.

[cosmicfish]

PB needs to be killed for the 150 year delay..... but, does it have to be intact?

Can't it be permanently offline with a gutted ops cylinder?

A few clues and the PCs are off to find PB2 or the highest ranking Regional base commander.
A reasonable question. If PB is effectively completely destroyed then that is a pretty big change to the game and a huge blow to the Project. Considering the other obstacles, and the inevitable questions about what happened to PB2 and/or the Regional commands, it might doom the Project to being a quixotic quest with no real possibility of success.

[.45cultist]

A reasonable question. If PB is effectively completely destroyed then that is a pretty big change to the game and a huge blow to the Project. Considering the other obstacles, and the inevitable questions about what happened to PB2 and/or the Regional commands, it might doom the Project to being a quixotic quest with no real possibility of success.

PB should have been frozen and had a computer glitch cause the delay or too damaged by the sabotage. and use the module's base as PB 2.

[tsofian]

Okay, this adds flavor but doesn't address any of the core issues here - any bioweapon attack should leave survivors capable of reviving the Project.

I think I have the fix.

Krell was playing a longer game. He knew Prime Base existed. He knew the universal drug existed, or that some sorts of antibiotics or vaccines were going to be sent to Prime base.

Yes the bio was introduced into the base and it was very quickly discovered and isolated. The physicians at Prime were able to determine they had medications to treat those ill and prevent tramisssion to those who were not yet infected. The medicines had been contaminated with either a toxin or an array of biological agents (an assortment of viruses and at least two prion diseases. Maybe something of all three.) The doses were lethal, but not immediately so. This way everyone in the base got a dose before the first symptoms began to appear and at that point it was too late to do anything about it.

The base NBC systems worked as designed, the medical staff performed perfetly and Now we have 100% kill on base personnel.

[cosmicfish]

I think I have the fix.

Krell was playing a longer game. He knew Prime Base existed. He knew the universal drug existed, or that some sorts of antibiotics or vaccines were going to be sent to Prime base.

Yes the bio was introduced into the base and it was very quickly discovered and isolated. The physicians at Prime were able to determine they had medications to treat those ill and prevent tramisssion to those who were not yet infected. The medicines had been contaminated with either a toxin or an array of biological agents (an assortment of viruses and at least two prion diseases. Maybe something of all three.) The doses were lethal, but not immediately so. This way everyone in the base got a dose before the first symptoms began to appear and at that point it was too late to do anything about it.

The base NBC systems worked as designed, the medical staff performed perfetly and Now we have 100% kill on base personnel.
I like the idea but you are talking about a very precise bit of sabotage there. I think if you want to go that route you need to consider how it occurred.

If the sabotage occurred outside PB then it would take a tremendous amount of luck for this to happen. Someone who had access to the drug would need to somehow identify lots going to PB, gain access to them, and then poison them. And if they didn't get every single dose going to PB then there would be good chance that some or even ALL of the staffers would get untainted meds and be fine.

If the sabotage occurred INSIDE PB, then what happened to the saboteur?

Sabotage raises a bunch of other questions that I posed in another thread, but sabotage in general should lead to much more losses. PB should be firmly in Krell hands, the Project should be in shambles.

As another question, if UA (or whatever it is called now) requires so much tinkering just to use, how did the sabotage go undetected?

[tsofian]

It would be tricky. I am going to assume that the actions were taken before the war. Depending upon who Krell is he could have done this as his last act out the door. Perhaps he didn't even do this to kill Prime base but to kill the whole project. Perhaps he assumed that ALL Project members, field teams abd base personnel would get this vaccine or drug cocktail before they were frozen so they would basically wake up just in time to die. This would be a very Krell thing to do. He was proabably pissed to no end that the teams he captured were not infected with the trajan horse. At that point he may have guessed that if the tricked out vaccine had not been destroyed it was at the Bases. He would give his guys doses of the real vaccine and then infect every captured Morrow Project Member with it and see what happened. They probably put some sort of tracking device on the infected people to see where they went. This would be quickly spotted and removed by standard protocals before the victims go anywhere near any base entrance, but would add to the concern in Prime. It would now be obvious that they were facing a prepared tech savvy enemy with some serious resources.

I think the refugee camp idea works fairly well. I would put it down on the valley floor though and the base is accessed through the long tunnel from the fake town ot paper recycling facility or whatever.

The colony is placed fairly close to the entrance, maybe a few hundred yards. The hostage/vector plan goes as in the book. The Krell do have a bomb. It was a variable yield weapon. The trapped Prime Base member, knowing the base could take the results (since it is ten plus miles away and under a lot of rock and such) dials up the bomb to maximum yield and detonates it.

This leads to a large crater which should be right over where Prime Base was thought to be. The follow on Krell teams find this much larger crater (filled with water) and absolutely no other evidence that Prime Base exists.

Krell's force keep a watchful eye out for any Morrow Team activations. For fifty years they keep a strict lookout for Morrow radio Traffic, for multiple team activations or for anything else that would indicate the Prime Base had survived and was functioning on sone level. During this period Krell teams cross and recross the area in which they believed the base was located. Heck to be certain they may pop a couple of other nukes or whatever.

In any case the Krell organization is absolutely certain that Prime Base was destroyed. After 150 years without the MP waking up except by internal means (see my post on that) they have no reason to suspect Prime wasn't effectively destroyed 3 years after the big OOPS.

[stormlion1]

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

[tsofian]

That was sort of my initial idea

[cosmicfish]

It would be tricky. I am going to assume that the actions were taken before the war. Depending upon who Krell is he could have done this as his last act out the door. Perhaps he didn't even do this to kill Prime base but to kill the whole project. Perhaps he assumed that ALL Project members, field teams abd base personnel would get this vaccine or drug cocktail before they were frozen so they would basically wake up just in time to die. This would be a very Krell thing to do. He was proabably pissed to no end that the teams he captured were not infected with the trajan horse. At that point he may have guessed that if the tricked out vaccine had not been destroyed it was at the Bases.
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?

He would give his guys doses of the real vaccine and then infect every captured Morrow Project Member with it and see what happened. They probably put some sort of tracking device on the infected people to see where they went. This would be quickly spotted and removed by standard protocals before the victims go anywhere near any base entrance, but would add to the concern in Prime. It would now be obvious that they were facing a prepared tech savvy enemy with some serious resources.
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?

[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/overview/disease-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 50–75 percent of the time, ordinary-type semi-confluent about 25–50 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 40–50 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/CLASSROOM_LAB_SAFETY/Trembling_Edge_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.

[tsofian]

Some take. Months. I bet the airborne ones in the aforementioned study didn't even take weeks. If these are engineered and injected in a fairly high titer they can certainly act more quickly. A month is not out of the question for mortality

[tsofian]

I was wrong it did take four or more months to kill.

It his is a wild type prion that is not weaponized.

[tsofian]

[QUOTE=tsofian;67379]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.[/QUOTE

I checked and until after 2000 the only qa standard for smallpox vaccine was from 1965. I need to get a copy of the older protocol

[tsofian]

How about this.

Prime Base is an active facility. The backup is a frozen facility.

The Project orders several tens of thousands of doses of Smallpox Vaccine in the Early 1980s. This would be odd, since the disease has been officially eradicated. Krell saw this as a sign that something was up and tainted a portion of the vaccine with a newly developed weaponized prion. He hoped that all of the Project would get the tainted lot but the luck of the draw saw it sent to Prime Base. It was stockpiled. During the war it became obvious that smallpox had been heavily weaponized by the Soviets and a large number of warheads with that agent were used against North America. As a wise precaution the entire Prime Base population was vaccinated against smallpox in the days after the war. This was a slow motion death sentence. It took three months before the first symptoms arose and another month before it was obvious that 100% of the population of a totally seal environment were all exhibiting similar symptoms. A month after that came the first fatalities. The Universal Antibody was completely useless against it, since it isn't an organism. The scientists at Prime did discover what it was and that it wasn't really infectious. If it had been they would have self destructed the base to prevent the spread of the disease. Their notes are available in the base.

There is no colony. There was no Krell Nuke and Krell has no idea where the base is. Prime did not send the recall signal to secondary base because they aren't certain if that lot of vaccine was also tainted. They did send all their data to the best medical base they had, which was to determine if a cure was possible and this base was given the wake up codes for Secondary base and several other teams. It was felt that even if this medical base had the tainted vaccine perhaps they could come up with a treatment before they began to suffer from the illness. They were not to wake up any additional teams unless they had the cure, since Prime Base thought all the lots had been tainted. This explains why no external wakes ups were ever sent. It was believed that once a team awoke it would have a maximum life expectancy of six months or less.

Krell did find the Medical base and did destroy them before they could get much traction. They were able to self-destruct the recall data and everything else Krell wanted before they were overrun.

In Prime Base they didn't do the "Final Deception" because there was no need. They did do the "Grand Deception" in the off chance someone besides MP showed up first. They told the Medical base all about it, so they would walk right through the disguise.

The disease causes paranoia, aggression loss of motor control and lots of other things typical of these ailments and made the last few weeks in Prime Hell as people went mad. The mass suicide was not to make the end easier for the people; it was to keep them from destroying parts of the base accidently in their dementia.

So this explains:
How the base was knocked out
Why EVERYONE died
Why the mass suicide
Why the Grand Deception
Why Secondary Base never woke up
Why the teams were never recalled

[tsofian]

This also explains the haphazard recall of frozen teams. They are waking up do to local recall events as described in the wake up sequence thread below.

[ArmySGT.]

You want some survivors in Prime Base? I'll give you some survivors in Prime Base..

Back of the hospital in the pediatrics wing..... A row of cryotubes filled with children under 10 that are the uninfected dependents of base personnel.

That is very Morrow Project!

[tsofian]

I need to check WHO and CDC guidance on vaccine administration in the 1980s. Current guidance is pregnant and nursing mothers absolutely no children under 1 and children under 18 only in emergencies. Freezing pregnant woman and infants will be a new and desperate issue. The older children will be fairly standard.

This will mean the base's final shutdown steps will be conducted by a group of new or soon to be mothers and the older children who were standing up well to the stress.

This leaves to three possible courses of action. They could decide to try and run the base hoping for a cure for the rest of the project in time to salvage the project.

They could leave prime and try to get to another base or some other haven

Finally they can get frozen.

Good story hooks in any case

[.45cultist]

You want some survivors in Prime Base? I'll give you some survivors in Prime Base..

Back of the hospital in the pediatrics wing..... A row of cryotubes filled with children under 10 that are the uninfected dependents of base personnel.

That is very Morrow Project!

Children would be a monkey wrench for teams expecting personnel, those who hate Pheonix could replace the with under age survivors. This would mean the TN7 Commander (Desert Search) might need to call up a medical team to help.