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iamafanofcartoons · 1 year

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Why Ironwood’s actions made him a villain, and Team RWBY’s actions made them heroes.

Let’s go into some perspective about why Ironwood + his regime, and not Team RWBY, was the actual “worse than salem” group. And why Team RWBY are the heroes, and Ironwood and his regime the antagonists.

Let’s turn back the clock to before James threatened to nuke Mantle or blackmail Penny into helping him, and shot down planes that would carry people to safety.

“He genuinely offered all his resources to Team RWBY and co to maximize all the chances of them getting better and winning.” While squeezing Mantle dry.

Pre-V8 he still was authoritarian militarist, who locked down Atlas and Mantle, crippling its trade and defense capabilities of other regions, which led to a lot of people left to starve or die to Grimm, and he was also squeezing Mantle dry on top of it with a blatant disregard to its safety, and only giving it token "support", while his Huntsmen were more concerned with arresting people protecting Mantle, than helping them fight back Grimm.

Mantle was dying in volume 7, and it was all James’ fault, and critics were demanding that after Ironwood squeezed and bled Mantle dry, that Atlas abandon Mantle.

The writing is on the wall, but people are so focused on how he treated RWBY and co that they completely miss (ironically, unlike RWBY and co themselves, as it was their major concern) how he treats literally everyone else.

Of course he would treat them well, they are a very useful asset! Unlike people of Mantle, who could die in a ditch for all he cares.

That's not to say that he wants them dead, of course... he just doesn't care about them. He doesn't care about the people he's sworn to protect.

“ For Mantle, the entire point of the Huntsmen down there was to secure it and cover for the lack of resources. “

Lack of resources he himself created, funneling every drop of dust to his pet project.

James was always a borderline dictator. And he could pretty much brow-beat the Council to do what he needs, seeing how he held two seats out of five, and one was vacant.

“But James isn’t authoritarian!”

Authoritarian: Favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.

“But Ironwood was trying to prevent invasion of Salem’s agents”

They infiltrated Atlas through Mantle, by means of using outdated security. With Watts even explicitly pointing out that Atlas got the shiny upgrades, but no one cared to get them to Mantle. And Cinder and Neo still got in. Ironwood failed spectacularly. As he always does.

People were losing their jobs and their living because of lockdown, and those who kept theirs, were working in harsh conditions. Grimm regularly invaded Mantle. People couldn't even get their children to schools without Huntsmen protecting them.

“Its for the greater good”

I just don't see any merit in humoring ideas that treat people as expendable pieces on the path to some lofty goal. "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make" logic is the logic of villains.

“Ironwood employed Penny and the robots, that shows he cares!”

The robots were shown to be like Star Wars Movie stormtroopers in terms of effectiveness, and Star Trek Redshirts in terms of survivability.

Also, not caring for someone implies not giving any thought to their problems, and in this particular case those problems were directly or indirectly created by Ironwood's actions or negligence. Sending Penny down there is a band-aid, an illusion of action. Also he was running her 24/7, having girl do the job of an entire military and her sole energy source and repairs comes from her dying father, who’s also being run ragged on Jimmy’s project.

“But Team RWBY used the satellite?”

Should we just discard the progress, if it was made by amoral means? Or should we rather use it, to at least in some way honor those who suffered for it?

“But Ironwood didn’t commit murder till he shot Oscar”

Murder is not the only weapon in dictatorship's arsenal. There’s media control and forbidding public functions and mass gatherings, which Ironwood did in the first episode of V7. There’s also banning weapons unless you’re in the dictator’s private army, which Clover literally confirmed in the 2nd episode, even ignoring Qrow’s license.

“Influential people aren't simply council members. People with money and connection need to receive privileges in exchange for services they may provide. That's how politics work. “

And yet, he literally SINGLEHANDEDLY LOCKED DOWN ATLAS. And neither other council members, nor other "influential people", represented in a show by Jacques, could stop him, despite it hurting their bottom lines. Whoops.

“ Y'all keep forgetting what being a soldier/military man entails. You obey your superior without question. That's not authoritarian, that's how any self-respecting army functions. “

Huntsmen aren’t supposed to be soldiers, they’re warriors who act with a code and serve society, not a general who treats everything like a contest of measuring “GLYNDA!”

Ironwood privatized the Huntsmen System, thus preventing Atlas Huntsmen from serving society, with the exception of the Happy Huntresses, who Clover called “Worse than Grimm” to Qrow. Imagine that defying Ironwood makes you worse than Grimm? Apparently that’s all it took for Robyn Haters.

Speaking of Clover...obeying orders without question? You mean like how Clover decided to defend Ironwood’s decision to abandon Mantle, try to arrest Qrow, and completely disregard the mission to capture Tyrian because “Good soldiers follow orders?” Then the Qrow vs Tyrian vs Clover fight makes sense. Tyrian wanted to cause chaos, Qrow wanted to stop Ironwood and Tyrian, and Clover wanted to obey Ironwood’s orders without question. Qrow made the mistake of thinking that Tyrian, who had never lied before, had meant that “putting the kid to bed” simply meant incapacitating Clover, not killing Clover. Meanwhile Clover had no problem arresting anyone who wasn’t licensed by Ironwood or carrying weapons that weren’t part of Ironwood’s army. I guess Clover did die as he lived...not a huntsmen, but a soldier.

“ Unless they showed someone's corpse or Team RWBY looking at beggars, there wasn't any sign of famine or death as you mention. The most there was is extra security and frequent robot patrols. “

Just because there are no corpses lying around on the streets, doesn't mean that people aren't suffering. A lot of the times their suffering goes unseen. You can't deny that Mantle looks like a mix of cyberpunk slum and depressive post-USSR Eastern Europe city. That's enough to make an educated guess about the state of the city and its inhabitants.

Just because Ironwood sacrifices some things, doesn't give him the right to sacrifice something he doesn't own - namely, other people.

Watts of all people called Jimmy out on neglecting Mantle's security. Aside from that, how did he help Mantle aside from sending a few Huntsmen there, which is, again, a band-aid, and an illusion of action?

“Ironwood trusted them like he trusted Ozpin” Remember what he did to Ozpin in V2. You know, the whole going behind his “Friend’s” back to get Ozpin, Salem’s chief nemesis and founder of the schools, fired? And also putting Penny in the Vytal Tournament despite nobody allowing it if they knew she was an android? This is the same guy who talked about trust? Ironwood is a hypocrite because he loves to talk about trust while betraying everyone else’s.

Remember the episode “Sparks?”

Unrest doesn't happen like *snap* and everything blows up. Tension grows gradually and usually goes unnoticed, until it's at the point when a slightest spark is enough to ignite the situation. What Jacques and Watts did was that spark, but the groundwork was laid by Ironwood's actions raising the tension between Mantle and Atlas. And that growing unrest could be seen as far back as e1 of that volume - specifically, in the drunk racist and Forest.

“Ironwood didn’t expect Watts to be alive!”

Someone broke through a military grade cyber security and caused all Atlesian robots and mechs to go "Execute Order 66″ on people. Whether or not it was Watts is irrelevant, because it's a known (to Ironwood) fact that there's someone capable of doing it*.* You don't need a hindsight to account for it, just a regular sight and basic common sense. Which Ironwood has none. That Ironwood, knowing this, only went as far as updating the infrastructure in Atlas, but not in Mantle, is not just negligence, it's a sabotage of his own goals.

The fact is that Ironwood's methods revealed his disregard for people with whom his goals don't align.

“Ironwood was to take drastic actions! There needed to be sacrifices"

The sacrifices began when he locked down Atlas and Mantle. They were just incidental, a product of ignorance and negligence.

“Atlas was the mightiest military” Name one battle they won that didn’t involve Team RWBY’s help?

Their ships could barely fire upon some giant worms, and had not been updated since the great war, causing them only to be able to effectively fire single laser shots against other ships.

An elite huntsmen can take out tons of weaker grimm. And Ironwood’s ships were useless against grimm as well. The paladins could work...yes.But they had a nasty habit of being stolen or hacked...which was again, ironwood’s fault.

“Qrow was willing to trust Ironwood!”

Even though Qrow told them in V6 that they should ask Ironwood for help, by the time the team actually met Ironwood, Qrow had changed his position to not talking to him. Sound familiar? Something Lionhart?

Ironwood didn't take defensive measures against Salem's forces. We see in the very first episode that whatever Ironwood is doing to keep Salem's forces out of Mantle isn't working.

We learned in episode 2 that he was not only aware of his actions having literally the exact opposite effect of what he was promising the people of Mantle, but he also accepted that.

Even before the main cast met Ironwood, they knew he either had no idea what he was doing, or he wasn't on their side any more. They didn't know which it was, but they already knew they couldn't count on him.

The grand sum of Ironwood’s character is:

“I can tolerate leaving thousands of innocents to die for some vague concept of the great good, but I draw the line at insubordination and lying.”

“But Ruby and Yang were being hypocritical in going behind Ozpin’s back!” A huge part of volume 7 was that Ruby realized that Ozpin was ultimately morally grey, and morally grey I mean his actions he took while thinking of other people. Selfishness is the complete opposite of morally grey, which instantly disqualifies Raven Branwen (mass murderer and thief), Adam Branwen (Mass murderer and terrorist), and Roman Torchwick. (Thief, murderer, and racist) from ever being qualified as morally ambiguous. As a result, Ruby ends up acknowledging Ozpin’s points, and even starts working with him again in V8. Yang on the other hand was agreeing with Blake’s points during the cargo truck ride and decided to go: “Hey Robyn, I know jimmy is oppressing your people and your actions against him are valid, but he’s trying to restore global communications for the greater good and his ‘protector of mantle’ didn’t actually kill your constituents, so if you could please stop taking back what’s yours, James will eventually repair mantle.”

And Robyn went: Okay.

Yang and Blake got Robyn to be willing to compromise with Ironwood, something Ironwood cannot do himself, and something he is incapable of getting people to do unless he abuses his military and political power, which he does on a regular basis.

“But Robyn was a terrorist who sabotaged the project!”

She was taking back the supplies that were meant for Mantle, that Ironwood was stealing from Mantle, for his personal project that was done without the council’s authority. She was giving those supplies back to the people of Mantle. Which emboldened the suppliers of Mantle in giving them hope that they could pressure Ironwood to repair Mantle’s defenses. Ironwood’s response? Call the entire city of Mantle “A few cityblocks”

“Robyn’s outfit and equipment was ridiculous compared to Ironwood’s military”

Yeah, when you’re in a city that’s poorer than Vacuo and oppressed by a small-minded man with a giant ego, you don’t tend to have access to the best equipment, clothes, etc. Not to mention that unlike Vacuo, Huntsmen aren’t allowed to protect people in Atlas unless they’re part of Ironwood’s private army.

“Team RWBY were selfish, Ruby is acting just like Roman!”

Lying to save lives and prevent human extinction is not the same as lying for your own self interest. When the gang steal and airship to get into Atlas, it isn’t an evil thing. They are doing it so they can save lives and protect innocent people. The good guys make sacrifices when they have to, where there is absolutely no other choice. Ironwood would sacrifice anything he could to protect his people, you can debate whether or not he’s a true villain, but he goes to far. Sacrifice isn’t a last resort for him, he believes it is. But most villains believe they’re on the right side. This is why most “Rewrites” that try to “Fix” Roman, Adam , or Ironwood go out of their way to rewrite the plot and characters to try to claim that the Villains are in the right, and to shame any female characters who stand in their way. The both the White fang and the good side use violence. But the white fang use violence and seek division and persecution as vengeance for their own struggles. Ultimately, through salem’s manipulation, they divide the intelligent creatures of Remnant. They attack hurt innocent people to further their own goals. The good guys use violence so that violence can be ended. Remind you of anyone? Cough cough, Batman! The sin of the cynic is acting purely in self-interest. Torchwick's line of "lie, cheat, steal and survive" refers to putting his needs first and foremost. It's not the same as resorting to desperate methods to save lives. Like, Jaune cheating his way into Beacon is motivated by self-interest, but his idea to steal an airship in V6 was motivated by keeping others safe. He isn't proving Torchwick's ideals are right in the latter instance, it's quite the opposite. Same with Ruby.

I'm not sure how people can say that Ironwood was proven right when we are shown that there were ways to save the people of Mantle. It's not even a one-time thing either, he thought that he had to keep forcing Mantle to make sacrifices but it turns out it was completely possible to make a compromise with them.

And if we're going to be completely honest it's Ironwood's refusal to compromise that's the biggest factor regarding Atlas's fate. For example, Neo was able to steal the lamp because his soldiers unintentionally gave her the opportunity and a way to escape. It's what led to Robyn acting the way she did on the plane and everything involving Penny was because of him.

Frankly, the only point I can give critics is the white Fang and it's only because the series so horrifically failed to demonstrate the difference between Sienna and Adam.

“But Ironwood was prepared to compromise with Robyn”

He wanted to have her taken into custody 1st and only then was he going to "negotiate," with her... I don't think I need to explain how this is not under any circumstances an actual compromise.

The actual compromise between Ironwood and Mantle took place in the Schnee Manor and that was entirely thanks to Blake, Yang, and sadly Jacques. And that was a compromise that he broke mere hours later when he decided to completely unnecessarily abandon them all to die... A decision he made without seeking any advice and then straight up threatened the people who dared question him on it.

“Sleet: The fact of the matter is, you've operated with a fair amount of autonomy for the past few years, James. But we need now is for you to work with us “

So Ironwood disrespected his peers and did whatever he wanted, and when called out on it, refused to listen to his colleagues, his equals.

A person arrested and completely at James’ mercy ISNT really a negotiating.

“I can either throw you in jail for the rest of your life OR you can agree to work under me, under my terms and conditions.”

What a “””negotiation.“”” Much fair.

“But Ruby is the villain in the trolley scenario!” If the Trolley is the floating city of Atlas, then the people of Mantle are the ones lashed to the tracks, and Ironwood put them there. Salem is coming up behind the Trolley, and Ironwood wants to bulldoze over the Mantle people. Ruby and the Gang want to get the people on board, but Ironwood refuses to let them on. To the point where he will do anything to prove he’s right and somebody is wrong. Ironwood is literally the man who cuts off his nose to spite his face. So Ruby and Crew use Ambrosius to get everyone to a new destination.

“Ruby and crew destroyed Atlas!” According to Cinder, RWBY saved thousands. And if you think an infrastructure is what makes a kingdom, then you forget that a kingdom is nothing without living breathing people, who live in Atlas, who have made it to Vacuo, and while Vacuo is about as xenophobic as Atlas, they put power in the people, and everyone there works together for the common society. Aka, the greater good. The people of Atlas can do good for each other, when Ironwood isn’t sabotaging everything.

“Ruby sabotaged Ironwood’s broadcast!” Ironwood’s broadcast was “Hey world, I want you to ignore every bad thing I’ve done and every red flag I’ve given off because there’s a greater evil in the world, and I want you to let me use my army that failed to protect everyone into your borders just like I forcibly brought my army into the Vytal Peace festival. I promise I won’t do anything behind your backs like use your events for weapon testing of the human soul like I did back then?

What was Ruby’s Speech? “Hi Everyone, I’m a Huntress, my job is to help you all. Listen, Atlas is under attack by the same bad person that brought down Beacon. We’re all in the same mess. Yeah, she can’t be killed, but everyone working together has been able to stop her the past 80 years, and if we all work together again, we can do it again. Here’s some people you can trust to validate the info, but Ironwood can’t be trusted because of all his actions in the past and his red flags. I believe in you all, because you all can do incredible things, and together everyone can stop Salem”

So Ruby was trying to unite humanity, give EVERYONE the hope and strength to work together and fight Salem, and stop Ironwood from getting too big for his britches.

Ruby was not being a savior, Ironwood was trying to act like he was. Ruby was trying to make humans and faunus alike the saviors. Power of the People.

“Ironwood is a battle-hardened experienced general!” Remnant had been at peace for 80 years, the only conflict was Grimm and the White Fang. And Adam represented the main bad people out there...in Vale. So Ironwood basically used a display of military bravado for everything (Glynda’s words) and people think that’s battle experience? If that’s the case, then Team RWBY and JNPR have loads of experience both on Ironwood in terms of tactics, and on the Ace Ops in terms of combat. Oh wait! THEY DO! That explains why Ironwood fails so spectacularly against Salem and her agents tactics till Team RWBY comes along to help, and why Team RWBY can defeat the Ace Ops.

”He was completely different back in volumes 2-3!″

Why did people look at Adam Taurus, a wannabe edgelord who tried to murder innocent passengers on a train....and then people decided to defend his every action? Claiming Adam was “misunderstood?” What, like Vergil from Devil May Cry, who murdered innocent people for power and had no problem unleashing monsters onto civilians, just like Adam did in Volume 3?

Why did people look at Ironwood, who brought a war fleet to a international peace conference, got screamed at for his warmongering by the Assistant Headmaster who kept her voice relatively level even against team rwby’s food fight, got the headmaster fired for not obeying Jimmy, and used the conference to conduct weaponization of the human soul projects....and claim he was a savior?

So yeah...Ironwood was cool, had drip, had charisma, had good intentions. But his actions spoke louder than his words. Sadly people only listened to his words. Must be his Messiah Complex.

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covid-safer-hotties · 2 months

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How The Koch Network Hijacked The War On COVID - Published Dec 22, 2021

Almost 3 years out from publication, and we can see the very real effects conservative dark money has played on public health in general, even for the liberal. (They never shift left for some strange reason.) Might be something to show your vote-blue-no-matter-who unmaskers in your life.

As Omicron surges, a shadowy institute filled with fringe doctors appears to be part of big business’ two-year strategy to legitimize attacks on pandemic interventions.

Earlier this month, as the Omicron variant began to spread, a small liberal arts school on a tree-lined campus in Michigan called Hillsdale College announced it was launching an Academy for Science and Freedom to “educate the American people about the free exchange of scientific ideas and the proper relationship between freedom and science in the pursuit of truth.”

The academy was inspired by the pandemic. “As we reflect on the worst public health fiasco in history, our pandemic response has unveiled serious issues with how science is administered,” noted the college president in a press release.

But the venture isn't exactly an effort to apply science to the COVID-19 crisis. The so-called “fiasco” was government pandemic measures like mask and vaccine mandates, contact tracing, and lockdowns.

Hillsdale is a conservative Christian institution with ties to the Trump administration. And the scholars behind the academy — Scott Atlas, Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff — are connected to right-wing dark money attacking public health measures.

The trio also has ties to the Great Barrington Declaration, a widely-rebuked yet influential missive that encouraged governments to adopt a “herd immunity” policy letting COVID-19 spread largely unchecked, even as the virus has killed more than 800,000 Americans.

The academy is the newest initiative designed to provide intellectual cover to a nearly two-year campaign by right-wing and big business interests to force a return to normalcy to boost corporate profits amid a pandemic that is now surging once again thanks to Omicron.

That campaign’s most recent success came earlier this month when Senate Republicans and a handful of Democrats joined together to pass a symbolic measure to repeal a Biden administration rule requiring large corporations to mandate vaccines or regular COVID tests for workers.

This is the story of how that corporate-bankrolled campaign originally started, and how it has continued to supplant public health experts and hijack the governmental response to the pandemic.

The War On Public Health When COVID began its spread across the United States in early March 2020, states responded by locking down to varying extents. All 24 Democratic governors and 19 of the 26 Republican governors issued weeks-long stay-at-home orders and restrictions on non-essential businesses.

Lockdown measures drove down cases in the U.S. and likely saved millions of lives globally. But the decline of in-person shopping and work, combined with factory shutdowns in places like China, disrupted the economy. A 2020 report from the corporate consulting firm McKinsey & Co. found the hardest-hit industries would take years to recover.

One sector in particular that took a big hit was the fossil fuel industry. Oil demand fell sharply in 2020, placing the global economy on uncertain footing.

Before long, business-aligned groups — particularly those connected to fossil fuels — began targeting the public health measures threatening their bottom lines. Chief among them were groups tied to billionaire Charles Koch, owner of Koch Industries, the largest privately held fossil fuel company in the world.

The war on public health measures began on March 20, 2020, when Americans For Prosperity (AFP), the right-wing nonprofit founded by Charles and David Koch, issued a press release calling on states to remain open.

“We can achieve public health without depriving the people most in need of the products and services provided by businesses across the country,” it read.

A month later, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a business lobbying group partially funded by Koch Industries, published a letter calling on President Donald Trump to enable states to reopen. That letter was signed by over 200 state legislators and “stakeholders,” including leaders from Koch-funded groups like the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the James Madison Institute.

To fight its war, the Koch network also relied on the astroturf roadmap behind the anti-government Tea Party movement, using its dark money apparatus to coordinate anti-lockdown protests.

Participants for a number of anti-lockdown rallies were recruited by FreedomWorks, a dark money group tied to Charles Koch instrumental in organizing Tea Party protests in 2009. Several of the 2020 rallies were also promoted by the Convention of States Action, a group founded by an organization with ties to the Koch network and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer that wants to rewrite the U.S. Constitution. In Michigan, a major event was organized by the Michigan Freedom Fund, a nonprofit funded by the family of Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos.

Groups funded by the Kochs and their colleagues also turned to a more insidious form of combat adapted from Tea Party strategies: building an academic and intellectual network that would create and promote its own “science” to attack COVID mitigation policies.

“Build Up Immunity… Through Natural Infection” On October 4, 2020, the Great Barrington Declaration was released to the world. Authored by Stanford University professor Jay Bhattacharya, former Harvard Medical School professor Martin Kulldorff, and Oxford University professor Sunetra Gupta, the declaration recommended governments allow younger, healthier people to become infected with COVID-19 while reserving “focused protection” for the vulnerable, in order to reach herd immunity. Suggestions included having nursing homes limit staff rotations and businesses rely on workers with “acquired immunity.”

“The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection,” read the declaration.

The document boasted a veneer of academic legitimacy. Its credentialed authors wrote the letter at a conference hosted by the auspicious-sounding American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. According to the declaration’s website, the letter has since been signed by more than 2,700 “Medical and Public Health Scientists,” and “none of the authors or co-signers received any money, honoraria, stipend, or salary from anyone.”

But the declaration arose out of the world of right-wing dark money and corporate interests, and many of its signatories aren’t verified.

AIER, which hosted and filmed the conference and registered the declaration’s website, is a Koch-tied libertarian think tank. From 2018 to 2020, the Charles Koch Foundation donated more than $100,000 to the institute. And before that, the Koch Foundation donated nearly $1.5 million to the Emergent Order Foundation, formerly Emergent Order LLC, a PR firm that engaged in hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of marketing consulting for AIER.

AIER has also received $54,000 from the Atlas Network, an anti-regulation group formerly known as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation that has received more than a half million dollars from the Charles Koch Foundation and the connected Charles Koch Institute. The Atlas Network also pocketed nearly $3.9 million from DonorsTrust, a dark money fund connected to wealthy right-wing donors such as Koch and Mercer, and its sister group, Donors Capital Fund.

In exchange, AIER has provided fellowships to academics in several Koch-funded programs. That includes economist Peter Boettke, the former president of the Mont Pelerin Society, of which Charles Koch has been a member, and Michael Munger, an adjunct scholar at the Koch-backed Cato Institute. AIER’s trustees include Benjamin Powell, director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University, which has received millions from the Koch network. Powell is known for his defense of sweatshops.

Bhattacharya, co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, is a former research fellow at the Hoover Institution, which received $430,000 from Charles Koch’s foundation between 2017 and 2018, as well as $1.4 million from the dark money fund DonorsTrust from 2016 to 2020. Since then, Bhattacharya has appeared in multiple Hoover video programs.

Bhattacharya, Gupta, and representatives of AIER did not respond to requests for comment. Kulldorff insisted that he has never received money from the Koch network.

“Koch-affiliated foundations funded pro-lockdown COVID research by Dr. Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, but they have never funded me, either directly or indirectly,” said Kulldorff. “Lockdowns have generated huge profits for Koch and other big businesses while throwing children and the working class under the bus.”

“Access To The Very Highest Levers Of Government” The Great Barrington Declaration and its natural immunity strategy were widely derided by scientists around the world. The strategy was condemned by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and its HIV Medicine Association while World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it “unethical.” Thousands of medical professionals called on governments to disregard strategies that rely on natural infection.

“Never in the history of public health has anyone suggested infecting the entire population with a pathogen with which we have no long term experience as a strategy for managing a pandemic,” said epidemiologist and physician Robert Morris, who has advised several federal agencies.

Nevertheless, the declaration and its authors were embraced by a number of political leaders, since their arguments provided their laissez-faire approaches to the pandemic with scholarly validity.

This list included President Trump. Two months before the release of the Great Barrington Declaration, Trump welcomed the document’s authors to a White House meeting, even though the administration’s COVID-19 advisor, Deborah Birx, warned colleagues that the doctors were “a fringe group without grounding in epidemics, public health, or on-the-ground common sense experience.”

Trump’s COVID-19 adviser, Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no background in infectious diseases, appeared to be one of several staff who supported the declaration’s strategy. While Atlas has denied urging the natural immunity approach, he publicly claimed that masks do not help curb the virus and called the idea of mandating vaccines for young people a “denial of science,” a claim that has been thoroughly disproved.

The president became enamored with herd immunity and the quick fix it promised for his reelection campaign. In mid-September 2020, Trump began trotting out the concepts that would soon be codified in the Great Barrington Declaration. He declared at an ABC News town hall, “And you’ll develop…a herd mentality. It’s going to be — it’s going to be herd-developed, and that’s going to happen.”

Following Trump’s lead, a number of Republican-led states adopted hands-off pandemic strategies.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered the resumption of most commerce in November 2020, including indoor dining, and barred localities from enforcing mask mandates and social distancing.

Declaration co-author Bhattacharya advised DeSantis on his approach and called the governor “extraordinary” for his handling of the pandemic. Last month, DeSantis signed legislation banning vaccine mandates statewide.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lifted his state’s mask mandate and COVID business restrictions in March 2021. The next month, he declared Texas could be close to herd immunity. Recently, Abbott issued an executive order banning mask mandates, which a federal judge recently ruled unenforceable because it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Great Barrington Declaration’s central arguments also found support overseas. In September 2020, co-author Gupta met in London with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had been slow to impose lockdowns and implement testing after the coronavirus was first identified in his country. A month after this meeting, Johnson sent a series of texts echoing talking points from the declaration, including that the virus wasn’t a real risk to people under 60.

The London meeting was also attended by Anders Tegnell, the state epidemiologist for Sweden, a country that became well known for its rejection of lockdowns. In April 2020, Sweden’s public health director asserted, “There is no clear correlation between the lockdown measures taken in countries and the effect on the pandemic.”

“You have to hand it to the [authors of the] Great Barrington declaration: They have had extraordinary access to the very highest levers of government,” said Gavin Yamey, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of global health and public policy at Duke University. “They have had a profound impact on policy-making. Time and time again, we’ve seen the [people behind the] Great Barrington Declaration get what they want.”

A Devastating Toll Despite the Great Barrington Declaration’s claim that it was delineating “the most compassionate approach” to COVID-19, states and countries that embraced its anti-interventionist strategy have all experienced a COVID massacre.

At the time of the declaration’s publication, roughly 200,000 Americans had died from the virus. Since then, that number has quadrupled, the highest known number of any country.

Florida has become a COVID-19 hotspot, accounting for nearly one in five U.S. cases last summer. Virus numbers also surged in Texas, with the two states accounting for one third of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths at the time.

Even with all those infections, herd immunity was never achieved. Last week, University of Texas researchers warned that the Omicron variant could lead to the largest surge to date in the state.

International efforts to reach natural herd immunity haven’t fared much better. A scathing report released in October by British lawmakers — many from Prime Minister Johnson’s own party — found that the country’s failure to respond to the virus quickly and aggressively was “one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced” and led to “many thousands of deaths which could have been avoided.”

And in Sweden, where roughly 11 out every 100 people had been diagnosed with the virus, COVID-19 fatalities stand at 1,476 deaths per million, many times that of its closest neighbors.

“We Are Intent On Not Letting Omicron Disrupt Work & School” Despite the costs, right-wing messaging against public health measures continues.

At first glance, lockdowns may appear beneficial to some big businesses, especially those that were deemed essential businesses and boasted robust online marketplaces. But social epidemiologist Justin Feldman, of Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, noted that “some regulations directly cost businesses money.”

Feldman explained that “paid quarantine and isolation means workers will be paid to stay home instead of working,” vaccine mandates could “make hiring difficult during a labor shortage,” and mask mandates “signal to the public that there is danger and they will then not patronize businesses.”

That’s likely why in March 2021, the dark money fund DonorsTrust spent nearly $800,000 to spread the narrative that the pandemic’s toll was actually due to government interventions. In May, DonorsTrust issued a press release claiming lockdowns hurt workers.

In June, Mercatus Center, a libertarian think tank at George Mason University heavily funded by the Koch family, began funding a database run by Emily Oster, an economist who has argued that the drawbacks of school closures outweigh the risks of COVID-19 exposure. Oster’s work was cited by Gov. DeSantis when he signed an order last August allowing parents to defy school mask mandates.

And earlier this month, the Foundation for Economic Education, another Koch-funded nonprofit, claimed that “naive government interventions” were responsible for a rise in global malaria cases and a spike in worldwide poverty.

Such anti-public health intervention narratives have had a lasting impact.

President Joe Biden hasn’t embraced herd immunity through infection the way Trump did, and he instituted a vaccine mandate for large companies that has faced court challenges and pushback from Republican and conservative Democratic lawmakers.

But Biden, whose COVID-19 response team is headed by former investment firm CEO and so-called “businessman’s businessman” Jeffrey Zients, has continued his predecessor’s push to keep the country open, even prematurely declaring “independence” from COVID-19 on Fourth of July last summer.

Earlier this month, Biden assured reporters that lockdowns would not be returning, despite the emergence of the Omicron variant and continued spread of Delta. According to a recent scientific simulation, an eight-week stay-at-home order in response to the new surge could save 300,000 lives.

Last Friday, the White House’s coronavirus response team put out a statement reaffirming its limited approach, a stance Biden reiterated in his remarks on Omicron on Tuesday: “We are intent on not letting Omicron disrupt work & school for the vaccinated.”

The defeat of lockdowns is only part of big business’ takeover of the country’s COVID-19 response.

The country’s eviction moratorium was allowed to lapse after it faced multiple legal challenges funded in part by the Charles Koch Foundation — at the same time as Charles Koch began making new investments in real estate. A subsequent moratorium put in place by the Biden administration was also struck down by the Supreme Court.

And while one of Biden’s first presidential promises was to clarify COVID-19 workplace safety standards, the resulting guidelines ended up limited to a small subsection of workers, following months of lobbying by business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber and other corporate interests have also pushed for a corporate liability shield to protect employers from COVID-19-related lawsuits and have also been fighting against ongoing efforts to release the vaccine intellectual property at the World Trade Organization to speed up global vaccination.

The right-wing push against public health measures shows signs of success. Support for pandemic lockdown measures dropped significantly over nine months from the start of the pandemic. A Gallup poll from November 2020 found that a plurality of 49 percent of Americans said they would shelter in place in response to a serious outbreak, down from 67 percent in March. The decline was mostly due to a “sharp drop” among Republicans.

“A Shining City On A Hill” The Great Barrington Declaration’s authors continue to push herd immunity through COVID-19 infections. Gupta co-founded a U.K. nonprofit called Collateral Global dedicated to exposing alleged negative impacts of COVID mitigation measures, which has Bhattacharya on staff.

Bhattacharya, meanwhile, published an op-ed last January claiming that vaccinating people in his native India was “unethical” because most had “natural immunity” and the risk of adverse reactions outweighed the benefits of inoculation. A month later, the country experienced its worst-ever surge.

All three co-authors are also now affiliated with the Brownstone Institute for Social and Economic Research, an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit founded by former AIER editorial director Jeffrey Tucker in May 2021 to prevent “the recurrence of lockdowns.” Bhattacharya serves as the organization's senior scholar, Kulldorff is a senior scientific director, and Gupta is an author.

According to Yamey at Duke University, the institute has been actively promoting vaccine disinformation.

“Time and time again, they have peddled dreadful misinformation and disinformation about vaccines,” he said. “They are, for example, vehemently opposed to vaccinating children, even though we know that unvaccinated children are 10 times more likely to be hospitalized. They very sadly went on television to say that health workers don't need to be vaccinated because they falsely claimed vaccination has no effect on transmission.”

Now declaration co-authors Bhattacharya and Kulldorff, as well as former Trump advisor Scott Atlas have surfaced yet again, as the first three “fellows” at the new Academy for Science and Freedom at Hillsdale College.

Hillsdale, a private non-sectarian Christian school, has long been a factory for conservative thought. In 2016, during a Hillsdale commencement speech, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called it a “shining city on a hill.” Statues of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher adorn a section of its campus known as “Liberty Walk.” Hillsdale President Larry Arnn chaired Donald Trump’s reactionary 1776 Commission, which sought to craft American history curriculums around America’s strengths.

Hillsdale refuses to accept public funds so it can be free from government mandates. Instead, it accepts large sums from the foundations and donor conduits of right-wing corporate executives and their families. The Charles Koch Foundation has donated over $300,000 to Hillsdale since 2015, and DonorsTrust gave over $3.6 million since 2014, including $2.5 million in 2020. The school has also found generous benefactors in the DeVos family, known for their Amway fortune, and Betsy DeVos’ parents, the Princes.

According to the academy’s recently launched website, the new academy will work “to educate policymakers and the general public about important discoveries and ideas that might otherwise be ignored by scientific journals and corporate media.” To do so, the academy plans to host scientific workshops and conferences, publish academic papers, and engage in “media and government outreach.”

But Feldman isn’t buying it.

“They have no interest in science,” he said. “They have been wrong about the pandemic time and time again. They use their stature as 'experts' to push for policies that are indifferent to ongoing mass death.”

#covid #mask up #pandemic #covid 19 #wear a mask #coronavirus #sars cov 2 #still coviding #public health #wear a respirator

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nov4-rocket5 · 8 months

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People talking about the Atlas Dust Embargo and Lockdown as though it was an unambiguously bad and 'fascist!' decision on Jimmy's part are dumb as a box of rocks tbh.

Oh, sure. Atlas should definitely be sending troops and supplies to everyone else! Even though the last thing anyone saw when Beacon went south was Atlas drones turning on and helping in the destruction.

Even when you just know that if Ironwood had done what people say he should have, and been handing out troops for everyone else, they'd have just called that a 'le fash dogwhistle' too.

"Oh noes! He like... has his army situated all over Remnant! That's totes a huge amount of power that he could wike... abuse and stuffs! Why isn't the fascist more focused on protecting his own kingdom?? Pretty big red flag to me!"

They can't even deny they wouldn't either, because that's exactly what most of the FNDM did when Jimmy revealed his big plan at the start of Volume 7. They also say this about Ironwood bringing more security to Vytal too.

So many RWBY Fans will insist that the show handles complex situations and grey morality well, befire painting everything in the most black and white way possible, and insisting it's meant to be viewed through a simplistic Good vs Bad morality because it's a "clever deconstruction/subversion" of "edgy misogynistic anime" by not actually having any complex moral dilemmas. And if you think otherwise, you're just *insert buzzword here.*

#rwby #rwde #james ironwood

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compaculaaa · 2 years

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How might yoketron or Dai Atlas react if they came over to check on the kids drawing and seeing prowl being very distracted and focused trying to draw a… vaguely similar doodle of lockdown, but in that like “scary monster” way younger kids tend to draw

It wasn’t a bright sight

#sparkling siblings au #tfa prowl #tfa yoketron #prowl doesn’t know the inner turmoil creator is experiencing #such memories #also was so scared to break the screen on my iPad Cus I was smashing my pen on the screen #to make it look like prowl was smashing the red crayon on the paper #he angy

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oddlyhale · 1 year

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Nah, I have to just say a few things because OP is the worst.

Looks like OP wants to have this "my disabled person is better than your disabled person" take.

BRO, no disabled person is somehow 'top-tier' than another disabled person. They're BOTH going through their own trauma and journey. Yang isn't the perfect little one-armed warrior and James isn't this devil that doesn't believe in trauma when his PTSD was crystal clear in V7 when he talked to Oscar down in the Atlas Vault.

While we know how Yang was poorly handled with her own PTSD arc, we get nothing from what Ironwood did or does to deal with his own. And from what I could get out of his arc? He's so busy protecting everybody else that he's never dealt with his problems thoroughly. He hadn't seen her in a YEAR and some change and gave Yang an arm anyways.

OP is acting like he's hunting Yang down to get her back to fighting? THAT'S NOT IRONWOOD, OP. THAT IS YOUR FANTASY-HEADCANON-IMAGINATION-FANFIC.

He didn't force them to come to Atlas, it was an idea the team came up with after Haven. He didn't force them to steal an aircraft to get to Atlas, that was Jaune's bright idea. That wasn't Ironwood's plan to fight Cordovin, it was the TEAM's. HE WASN'T EXPECTING THE TEAMS AT ALL UNTIL THEY CAME KNOCKING ON HIS DOOR. He was so busy keeping Remnant on lockdown that he never once thought a thing about Team RWBY+JNOR. He saw Weiss at the manor after bullying Jacques but he never stopped and thought about her team. (Wow, the one person that saw Weiss as a person and not as a limb of a team or family name.)

The team baby-duckling their way into his life because they think, since they're heroes, they should be given permission to do whatever they want, and because they got a world-changing relic in their hands... and then LOST to Cinder.

He gave Team RWBY+JNOR food, shelter, and freedom to explore Atlas and Mantle, help with the elite Ace Ops on missions, gave them their Huntsman licenses, and upgraded their gear. HE ISN'T FORCING THEM TO DO ANYTHING. HE WANTS THEM TO GET BETTER.

Also, VERY convenient that the writers want to cover up the fact that Ironwood gave Yang that arm A YEAR LATER while she was recovering. Maybe because... he understands what it's like to lose a limb??? WHOA???

But okay, if OP wants to say Yang is the pillar of overcoming trauma, then WHY WAS SHE THE WORST SISTER IN V9 AND IGNORING RUBY'S DEPRESSION. YANG IS THE WORST IN V9 OUT OF THE TEAM. SHE IS SO HYPERFOCUSED ON BLAKE THAT RUBY IS EDGING CLOSER TO SUICIDE AND YANG COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO CHECK ON HER.

I fucking hate that the FNDM wants to forget that Yang was the worst person to try and deal with someone else's issues. SHE'S NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH PROBLEMS. RUBY HAD THEM. AND SHE COMMITTED SUICIDE AFTER BEING PUSHED BY NEO, AND YANG JUST STOOD THERE AND LET HER DRINK THE TEA.

#rwde #op is braindead

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rubysandviper · 4 months

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Good morning scarabia it seems we are still on lockdown, the possum, Kalim, and Atlas fell asleep in the main door and i really do think something is out there so keep a wepon and your pen with you al att times

#jamil viper #twst rp #twisted wonderland rp #twisted wonderland roleplay #twst roleplay

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numinousmysteries · 8 months

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Dancing the Tandava (4/10)

[on Ao3] @today-in-fic

Geneva, Switzerland 2023

Hannah forgets William’s parents were coming to visit until she hears knocking on the door. She’s been up all night in a panic and is so tightly wound that the sound of the knock makes her whole body flinch.

Last night, she and William had been watching a movie on his laptop, both lying face down in his bed, propped up on their elbows. He has a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of old sci-fi and horror B-movies, and, after learning she’d never seen Plan 9 From Outer Space or Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, he’s made it his personal mission to expand her horizons. As aspiring physicists, they’ve made a game out of poking holes in the films' plots, but she can tell he genuinely enjoyed them.

They were midway through The Thing when William got a call. Dr. Bellona needed his assistance immediately for a special project at the large hadron collider. She heard William agree to come into the lab even though it didn’t make any sense. They were both research interns for Dr. Farber, whose office was next door to Bellona’s. Besides, interns aren’t certified or trained to work directly on the collider, and they’re never urgently needed at 9 p.m.

“Bellona?” she asked. “Didn’t you say you saw him doing something weird near the Shiva statue on your way home today?”

“Yeah,” William replied, getting out of bed. “I guess now I can ask him what he was up to.”

Hannah had a bad feeling. She bit her lower lip and tried to resist the impulse to pull him back onto the bed as he rose up.

She watched as he pulled a thick navy sweater over his gray t-shirt. A thin line of his toned abdomen peeked out as he lifted up his arms and she forced herself to look away. William is her best friend, the first person she’d ever met who could keep up with her in debates about loop quantum gravity. He’s also undeniably hot: Tall and lean, with piercing blue eyes, and a strong jawline. She teases him for being a jock because he played varsity basketball and baseball in high school, but she secretly appreciates his body as much as his mind.

They’re only friends, though—and roommates and co-workers but nothing more. They don’t talk about their dating lives, although based on how much time he spends either with her or at the lab she can’t imagine his is any more exciting than her own non-existent one. Sure, she feels an electric jolt whenever his hand grazes hers, but William Mulder could probably get any girl he wants. Well, maybe if he toned down his own nerdiness a little.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said, leaving her alone on his bed. Hannah groaned in protest but she could already hear the apartment door shutting behind him.

She waited up for him to return. An hour, then two, then three. She texted and called him but he didn’t respond. Finally at 1 a.m. she pulled a puffy coat over her pajamas, slipped on a pair of boots, and marched down to the ATLAS facility at CERN where she and William worked. She tapped her key card to the sensor at the door but it lit up red and didn’t open. When it failed two more times, she knocked at the door, getting the attention of a security guard she hadn’t seen before.

“Can I help you?” he asked, poking his head out the door into the cold night air.

“Um, I left something at my desk. I just wanted to come pick it up.”

“You’ll have to come back in the morning,” the security guard said sternly. “There’s been an incident and the entire facility is on lockdown.”

“An incident?” she asked, scrunching her brow in concern. It seemed too quiet for there to have been an accident at the facility. There were no sirens or crowds assembled. “What kind of incident?”

“Not sure,” he said. “But someone’s gone missing in the collider tunnel.”

“Missing?” she asked. It wasn’t possible. The large hadron collider was housed in an underground tunnel made of reinforced concrete. It was huge, nearly 17 miles in circumference, but entirely enclosed. There was nowhere for someone to go missing.

The guard just shrugged and started pulling the door closed.

“Wait—” she said, yanking the glass door back open. “Who is it?”

“An intern, they think,” he said. Then he shut the door.

Hannah’s bad feeling got a lot worse.

Back at the apartment, she spent the rest of the night texting other interns in their cohort to see if anyone knew what had happened, but everyone was either asleep or equally clueless.

When she heard the knock at the door she perked up, thinking it was William and he’d forgotten his keys. She didn’t expect to see his parents there instead. She met them once before, when she stayed at their home for a weekend over the summer. William’s mother, from whom he inherited his eyes and coloring, was a doctor and scientist, the kind of accomplished and serious woman she hoped to one day become herself. His father, who looked nearly exactly like an older version of William, was funny and, as William warned, did tell some strange stories but she found them fascinating. Hannah sat aghast as Mr. Mulder recalled a liver-eating monster, a telekinetic killer, and satanic PTA members. William and his mom only rolled their eyes, clearly having heard (or, in Dr. Scully’s case, lived through) these tales before.

Now, she watches as William’s mother’s face drops when she tells her he’s gone.

“Where is he?” his father shouts, cutting through her shock.

Hannah tries to answer, but she only starts crying harder. Dr. Scully drapes an arm around her and leads her to the living room sofa. The coffee table is cluttered with her and William’s books and notebooks and the remains of their takeout dinner from the night before. They would have cleaned up after the movie but then William was called away.

Hannah buries her head in her hands, trying to slow her hyperventilation, as Wlliam’s mom sits down next to her, rubbing her back. She’s ashamed to be such an emotional mess in front of them, but she can’t help it.

“Mulder, why don’t you get Hannah a glass of water?” Dr. Scully asks softly. William’s parents call each other by their last names, a holdover from their days as FBI partners. He said it was embarrassing, but she thinks it’s sweet.

Mulder returns with the water and Hannah sips it slowly.

“Hannah, can you tell us what happened?” Dr. Scully asks gently, still with a calming hand on her back.

Hannah takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Scully,” she says.

“Dana,” William’s mom interrupts. “You can call me Dana.”

“Okay,” Hannah continues. “He was called in last night to assist on a project with the large hadron collider, but he never came back. I went down to our worksite and they told me he’d gone missing inside the LHC tunnel. But that’s impossible. The tunnel is fully enclosed.”

She pauses to wipe the tears off her face with her sweatshirt sleeve. “I think this physicist Dr. Bellona has something to do with it. William saw him yesterday leading some sort of ritual outside the Shiva statue and then he was the one who called William last night.”

“What Shiva statue?” Mulder asks, his eyes darting from Hannah to his wife.

“Um, there’s a statue of the Hindu god Shiva right behind our building. Apparently, Dr. Bellona was chanting and scattering something there with these other people and he kind of stared down William when he saw him.”

“We have to go see that statue,” Mulder says, already headed to the door. His frenetic energy reminds her of William when he’s excited about a new idea.

“Is that okay, Hannah?” William’s mom asks. “Can you come show it to us?”

She guides them outside to a courtyard in between her apartment and the neighboring office building. There, on a granite podium, stands a giant brass model of a majestic Shiva dancing in a fiery halo. He has one foot on the back of a smaller being, and the other raised in the air in celebration.

“This is it,” she says. “It was a gift from the Indian government. What do you think Bellona was doing here?”

Mulder steps forward to examine the statue.

“I don’t know,” he says, rubbing his fingers along the engraved plaque on its base. “But I saw this same symbol earlier this morning in the taxi that took us here from the airport. The driver had a medallion hanging from his mirror that looked exactly like this.”

“It’s probably a coincidence,” Dana says. “But I have to admit, it’s odd. Why is there a religious statue at a scientific center?”

“There are parallels between the story of Shiva dancing the universe into existence and the movement of subatomic particles,” Hannah answers. As a self-proclaimed atheist, she’d asked herself the same question upon coming to CERN, confident that all answers could be found in science. But the more she learns about particle physics, the more mysterious the world seems. “Carl Sagan called Shiva’s cosmic dance the most elegant and sublime representation of the creation of the universe.”

“She quotes Sagan,” Mulder says, smiling. “No wonder William likes you so much.”

Hannah blushes. Glancing down, she spots a green, trifoliate leaf on the pebbled ground. It’s bright with two smaller leaflets and a longer, wider one in the middle, and stands out against the gray of the stones on the walkway. As she looks around on the ground, she sees a few more dispersed around the statue.

“Look at this,” she says, bending down to pick it up. “Maybe Bellona was scattering leaves.”

“Let me see,” Dana says, reaching over to take the leaf from Hannah. “It looks like it’s from a citrus plant, possibly tropical. I don’t think it’s from anything that grows around here.”

“Hannah!” a French-accented voice calls out and all three of them turn around.

It’s Emmanuelle Toussaint, a young French engineer who works in the LHC control center. Hannah had met her at a cocktail reception for women at CERN and the two had become friendly. If there really was an incident with the LHC, Emanuelle would know about it.

“Did you hear what happened?” Emmanuelle asks, striding over to the statue near Hannah and William’s parents.

“To William?” Hannah blurts out desperately.

Emmanuelle looks confused. “No,” she says. “The LHC operated at 15 TeV last night.”

“That’s physically impossible,” Hannah says under her breath.

You don’t need to tell me that,” Emanuelle responds excitedly. “I saw it with my own eyes from the control center, though. We’ve calibrated and recalibrated every detector and we’re still getting the same reading.”

“Scully, I might need some translating here,” Mulder leans over to Dana to whisper.

“I don’t think I understand what’s going on either,” she says.

“The collider has a maximum total collision energy of 14 TeV, or teraelectronvolts per beam. It’s only ever operated at 13 TeV, though, and achieving 15 TeV would require physical upgrades that are years away,” Hannah explains.

“Sorry,” she continues. “Emmanuelle, these are William’s parents, and,” she pauses. “William went missing last night.”

“Oh my goodness,” Emmanuelle gasps, bringing a thin hand to her mouth. “That was him with Dr. Bellona.”

“What happened?” Dana asks.

“Dr. Bellona was the one running the experiment last night. There’s footage of him inside the tunnel working on a calibration with someone else. I didn’t realize it was William with him. Then, there was a power surge and we lost connection to the cameras. When they came back online, Bellona was still there but William wasn’t.”

“Where could he have gone?” Hannah asks.

“I don’t know,” Emmanuelle continues. “But Dr. Bellona called the control room and wanted us to begin the collider run. We obviously can’t do that if anyone is still in the tunnel and, since we didn’t see William exit, we couldn’t start the collider. We locked down the facility and had the technicians do a full sweep of the tunnel. No one was there. Bellona insisted William had exited with him and had gone home, and since there was no sign of him in the tunnel, we figured he was telling the truth. That’s when we started the experiment and the LHC hit 15 TeV.”

“But William didn’t come home,” Hannah says quietly.

“What would happen if the collider ran while he was inside the tunnel?” Mulder asks.

Hannah glances at Emmanuelle. They both know it would be instantly fatal for anyone to be exposed to the high voltage and intense magnetic fields generated by a run of the particle accelerator. Hannah’s heart thumps hard in her chest.

“It is impossible,” Emmanuelle says, shaking her head. “We would never run an experiment with anyone inside. There are too many safety protocols in place. And no one was inside at the time. I don’t know where William went, but I can promise you he was not in the tunnel.”

“I think we need to talk to this Dr. Bellona,” says Dana.

#xfiles #txf #xf fanfic #msr #xfiles fanfic #x files #the x files

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