T2K Cuisine - Food in the aftermath

[pmulcahy11b]

So, how long do you think it would take in T2K before some people resorted to the Soylent Green option?

[HorseSoldier]

I'd guess cases of cannibalism start turning up during the winter of 97-98 after the nukes fly and tractor trailer loads of food stop turning up to replenish the local grocery store.

Probably more commonly its an issue of poorly armed, poorly equipped (both in terms of hardware as well as know how) civilians preying on other civilians in the Twilight game universe, where food is not wildly scarce and the population isn't falling down to the 90%+ death toll. People in military units, and even larger marauder bands, would be able to shake down somebody else for enough food to not have to resort to cannibalism.

Of course, there'd always be room for cannibal cult/armies like in Pournelle/Niven's Lucifer's Hammer as a possibly extra ugly opponent for PCs. Might not work that well in Poland/Germany, where surviving troop densities would make pretty short work of a big pack of ghouls, but back CONUS, or the uncontrolled parts of the UK, etc., they'd work.

[Targan]

I know not everyone here has access to the Challenge Magazine T2K mini modules but I consider them to be canon and the Rifle River mini module in Challenge issue #39 deals with events surrounding a death cult cannibal army fighting its way up the Connecticut River in October 2001 in an attempt to reach pre-war small arms factories including the Colt plant at Hartford. An excellent module IMO.

[Webstral]

For obvious reasons, I've taken the liberty of modifying the Rifle River cannibals. My ideas for a horde in northern New England turned out to be so close to the Rifle River villains that I've pretty much incorporated them into the Blood Cross horde. Off-canon? Yes. Terribly off-canon? Probably not. I think it's entirely possible to play the mini-module as listed with a few fairly modest variations. I don't deal New England quite the hammer blow that GDW did back in the day, but more than half of the population is dead. By early 2001, marauders are finding that the surviving Yankees have fortified their towns and that almost everyone left alive who isn't a marauder has retreated inside walls somewhere. Small bands of marauders are either combining forces or being eaten up by the larger bands--in some cases, quite literally. The horde of the Blood Cross has survived the winter of 2000-2001 by eating everything left in northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine--including the locals. Very ugly, but at least the surviving cantonments of New England have no illusions about the price of failing to deal with these guys.

Webstral

[headquarters]

I have seen in movies and read about people that have human flesh in their diet :
they may develop some sort of neural problem leading to shaking hands,jitters etc .

can anyone confirm this ?

( See book of Eli where this is what Denzel Washington notices about the elderly cannibal couple who have them over for tea)

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by headquarters

I have seen in movies and read about people that have human flesh in their diet :
they may develop some sort of neural problem leading to shaking hands,jitters etc .

Two things came to mind when I read that:

1) Mad Cow Disease -- the human flesh may be transmitting some sort of disease, enzymes, or prions that are incompatible with human digestion or metabolism.

2) Kuru, also called the Laughing Disease. In the Western Pacific (in Indonesia?) there are a group of people called the Fore. They regularly practiced cannibalism, and when the brain was eaten, there was a chance you could get Kuru, which screws up your nerve impulses and causes muscular spasms. At its worst (usually right before death), Kuru causes spasms in the diaphragm that make the person kind of sound like they're laughing.

Here's a Wiki link for Kuru
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%28disease%29

It turns out that both are a form of spongiform encephalopathy, and are caused by prions -- which is just a fancy way of saying that nasty proteins are eating your brain.

[headquarters]

a rump steak or filet of breast is OK , but once you start getting into brains and marrow you can get the tell tale shaking hands ?

My players might ask themselves - "why is he harping on about this all of a sudden ??"

No particular reason ,guys

[.45cultist]

Originally Posted by headquarters

I have seen in movies and read about people that have human flesh in their diet :
they may develop some sort of neural problem leading to shaking hands,jitters etc .

can anyone confirm this ?

( See book of Eli where this is what Denzel Washington notices about the elderly cannibal couple who have them over for tea)

JKD, can't spell the "K" part, is when prions create holes in the brain.

[.45cultist]

T2013's E-teams reminded me of the Civil War's foragers.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by .45cultist

JKD, can't spell the "K" part, is when prions create holes in the brain.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Very similar to mad cow disease. It's sometimes still found in the highlands of New Guinea, where the locals call it Kuru.

[Ironside]

Originally Posted by Webstral

For obvious reasons, I've taken the liberty of modifying the Rifle River cannibals. My ideas for a horde in northern New England turned out to be so close to the Rifle River villains that I've pretty much incorporated them into the Blood Cross horde. <snip> Loads of good stuff </snip>
Webstral

Care to expand?

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by Ironside

Care to expand?

I never did add the rest of the New England to my guide, did I? Fatherhood and grad school have taken a real bite out of my creative writing time.

In a nutshell, by Winter 2000 New England largely has transitioned to a new modus operendi. The Last Submarine serves as my starting point. I'm sure everyone's read enough about Poseidon's Rifles for now, so I won't repeat myself here other than to remark on the fact that the Coast Guard controls the coast of New Hampshire and southern Maine. Throughout the 1998-1999 timeframe, New England makes a painful transition to self-sufficiency in food. During these two years, almost two-thirds of the population dies--principally from exposure and disease brought on by poor sanitation and vulnerability as a result of malnutrition. Violence is also a leading cause of death.

Throughout 1998, law and order is fading but recognizable. Although describing the events of every locale is beyond the scope of this thumbnail sketch, in general the flight from the big cities imposes a huge burden on New England. However, winter solves a lot of the problems. Legions of urbanites die of exposure, along with countless locals who live within easy walking distance of the highways.

Come spring, communities everywhere attempt to make the transition to partial self-sufficiency at least. Some areas are far more successful than others. Where food runs short, chaos spreads. Small-scale banditry becomes more organized. Throughout New England, citizens attempt to respond by forming neighborhood watches that are the precursors of militias. Many bandits organize even further and move to secret or defensible locations.

Initially, military forces in the region are able to deal with the new bandit gangs. What the police can’t handle gets turned over the military, who are able to use numbers and firepower to overcome outlaw resistance. A classic example of this is the fighting between forces of the New Hampshire Army National Guard and megapunks in southern New Hampshire in early 1998. Unfortunately for the New Englanders, the start of the Second Mexican-American War changes everything. Army and Air Force National Guard and Reserve units are drawn out of New England to reinforce Fifth and Sixth US Armies in the Southwest and Ninth US Army in the Pacific Northwest. Law and order take a body blow.

As the power of marauders grows, surviving New Englanders move into fortified towns or neighborhoods. Tracts of nearly uninhabited land between towns and urban neighborhoods grow. Communities increasingly resemble medieval towns and cities. The dying continues, but the pace begins to slow.

By the end of the harvest in 2000, the transition is nearly complete. New England has become a patchwork of city-states with varying degrees of defensibility and self-sufficiency. With somewhat less than a third of its pre-war population surviving (around four million), New England has reached a rough equilibrium.

The new danger comes from super-gangs of marauders. Unable to tackle the defenses of the new city-states (the smallest of which have been exterminated or taken over in 2000), the marauders adapt. While some prey on each other, others join together. Under the leadership of the charismatic and messianic Archbishop Smite, a great horde has assembled in northern New England. Wintering over in towns like Berlin, NH, the horde has survived throughout the winter by eating everything—including the locals.

Smite has succeeded by addressing the needs of the marauders. They are desperate people who have done terrible things. He tells them that the archangel Gabriel has given him a message that the nuclear exchange was intended to be Armageddon; however, the job was not completed. All of the marauders have received God’s silent message to cleanse and purify the world in anticipation of Judgment Day. Therefore, they are not to be blamed for their acts. In fact, the marauders are holy warriors carrying out the will of God Almighty. Under the leadership of the Archbishop Smite, the horde has been charged with purifying the land and converting those who can be saved during a great southward crusade. The final goal? The last great cathedral—the Washington Cathedral. There, all of God’s servants will be taken up to glory for executing His will.

Smite uses very Nazi-esque tactics to control and direct his converts. Torchlight religious ceremonies, combined with stark imagery and sermons, have welded together disparate and fractious groups. Cannibalism by necessity has become cannibalism as holy sacrament. The sinful flesh of non-believers is purified by ritual and consumed, used thereby to fuel the crusade of the righteous.

It’s going to be a tough planting season in New England.


Webstral

[headquarters]

Web - that is some scary imagery you conjure .

I like it a lot !



The bleakness and the terrible depths inhuman nature are another part of the T2K universe that the discussions on TOE and OOB discussions cant fully convey.