#the first city run on atomic power

[mitsdriveswhere]

... Seems legit

[16woodsequ]

Things People Seem to Forget About Steve Rogers (aka the past is complex)

Things in the future didn't happen in a vacuum, and while Steve missed a lot of stuff while he was in the ice, he would have seen the roots of things like the Civil Rights, Women's Rights and even LGBTQ+ Rights movements in his time.

While I'm sure Steve encountered a lot of people expecting certain right-wing behaviours from him, due to his birth year and the things he missed in the ice, this doesn't mean he would act that way—even right out of the ice.

But first lets take a look at the things Steve missed and see what he did in fact know:

The atom bomb. Steve never saw the atomic fallout, but what did he see? Hydra bombs literally being flown to his home city. There is also a possibility that as a specialty team, he learned about the German Nuclear Program during the war. His unit was tied to the Strategic Science Reserve, so I wouldn't be surprised if between that, and Hydra's bomb initiatives, Steve was well aware of the potential of a bomb threat. I doubt Steve has clearance to know about the Manhattan project, and I think he would be horrified to learn about the impact of the atom bomb on Japan (especially since he essentially thwarted the same thing from happening to New York) but majorly powerful bombs would not surprise him.

• The Cold War. Steve may not have experience the Cold War, but he grew up surrounded by the outcome of the First World War after the Communist take over of Russia. The debates surrounding Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism aren't new. Steve would have grown up with them and would probably be familiar with American pro-capitalist, anti-communist rhetoric. But would he agree?

Here's some things we know about Steve: He's an artist, he grew up during the Depression which was heavily mitigated by socialist measures, he grew up poor, he grew up disabled. As an artist Steve would be well aware of the debates between the political movements, and with his background, and the success of Roosevelt's New Deal reforms, it would not surprise me if Steve leaned more towards the Socialist side of the scale.

All this to say: Steve would not be unfamiliar with the tension between Russia and the USA. Especially since even though they were allies during the war, there were already concerns that the USSR wasn't so much 'liberating' the countries they drove Germany out of, as putting them under new management.

Steve would be familiar with the tensions underlying the Cold War, and his background might lead him to have a critical view of some of the pro-Capitalist propaganda that came out during the Cold War. While I don't think Steve would approve of Russia's methods and the ultimate outcome of Communism there, I don't think he would approve of the Red Scare Witch Hunt that happened in the States either.

• Civil Rights Movement. While Steve missed the major changes that occurred during the 50s and 60s, he would not be unfamiliar with movements for equality. Steve would also not be unaware of the inequality that minorities faced in his country.

For example:

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was established in 1909 and is still run today. The NAACP fought and fights against discrimination and advocates for equality.

In the 30s President Roosevelt responded to "to charges that many blacks were the "last hired and first fired," [his administration] instituted changes that enabled people of all races to obtain needed job training and employment. These programs brought public works employment opportunities to African Americans, especially in the North" (Link)

"The first precedent-setting local and state level court cases to desegregate Mexican and African American schooling were decided during [the late 1930s]" (Link)

In 1941 thousands of Black Americans threatened to march on Washington for equal employments rights which pushed Roosevelt to issue an executive order that "opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, color or national origin." (Link)

The Double Victory or Double V Campaign during the war was an explicit campaign to win the war against fascism in Europe and the war against racism as home.

All this to say, Steve would not be unfamiliar with many of the issues tackled during the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s.

Not only that, but Steve led a multi-racial special unit during the war during a time of active army segregation. Not only does he have a Black man on his team, but also a Japanese man. This would have most definitely led to backlash from higher command as well as discrimination from other units against Jones and Morita. Steve and the entire Howling Commandos would be explicitly aware of prejudice against two of their members and likely had to fight for them many times.

• Anything space travel. It's true Steve wouldn't know anything about attempts to reach the moon. But there were still several space discoveries he could know about, especially since he and Bucky are clearly interested in scientific discoveries, considering how they went to the Stark Exbo before Bucky shipped out.

Some discoveries:

Hubble's Law: In 1929 Hubble published evidence for an ever expanding universe, and thus provided evidence of the Big Bang theory.

1930: Discovery of Pluto (makes me chuckle to think this is a relatively new discovery for Steve and he wakes up to find it is a dwarf-planet now. You think Millennials are protective of Pluto? I think Steve would be too 😆.)

1937: "the first intimation that most matter in the universe is `dark matter'"

Personally I think Steve would be absolutely amazed by the advances in space travel.

• Women's Rights. Like with Civil Rights, while Steve may have missed the large movements during the 50s and 60s, he was around for the early movements. The 60s movement is called Second Wave Feminism for a reason. This is because there was already many pushes for women equality in Steve's time.

For example:

1920: White women win the right to vote. This means Steve's mother first voted in his lifetime. I feel this alone would make Steve heavily aware of inequality faced by women. (As a side note I feel that Sarah always emphasized voting to Steve since it was such a major development in her lifetime.)

Also in the 20s the Flapper trend rose, along with hemlines. Women's skirts were shorter and they smoked and drank with men. Middle-class and working-class women also worked outside of the home. The 1920s-1930s 'modern' woman is very different from the Victorian vision of a woman in petticoats and skirts.

Early Birth Control movement: Was "initiated by a public health nurse, Margaret Sanger, just as the suffrage drive was nearing its victory. The idea of woman’s right to control her own body, and especially to control her own reproduction and sexuality, added a visionary new dimension to the ideas of women’s emancipation. This movement not only endorsed educating women about existing birth control methods. It also spread the conviction that meaningful freedom for modern women meant they must be able to decide for themselves whether they would become mothers, and when."

1936: A Supreme Court decision declassified birth control information as obscene. Legalised doctor-prescribed contraceptives.

WW2 Watershed: Women serve in the army and work factory jobs. The government establishes universal childcare while women work.

Women also wore pants and form fitting clothes to work in factories. We also see Peggy wearing pants during the last assault on Hydra. While Steve may need to get used to modern fashion, he would already be familiar with the 'morale outrage' over women's clothes in his time, and probably try to manage his surprise in private as well as possible.

• LGBTQ+ Rights. Like with the rest of the equality movements, LGBTQ+ rights movements also started before the late 1900s.

1924: "Society for Human Rights is founded by Henry Gerber in Chicago. The society is the first gay rights organization as well as the oldest documented in America." This organisation was broken up soon after founding due to arrests, but it published "the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom."

In the 1920s and 30s "the gay and lesbian movement started taking shape. Social analysts began rejecting prior medical definitions of "inversion" or "homosexuality" as deviant.

Communities of men and women with same-sex affiliations began to grow in urban areas. Their right to gather in public places such as bars was tenuous, and police raids and harassment were common." (Link)

WW2 Watershed: While many LGBTQ people lived in rural areas or outside 'queer neighbourhoods' the war brought people from all backgrounds together. "As with most young soldiers, many had never left their homes before, and the war provided them an opportunity to find community, camaraderie, and, in some cases, first loves. These new friendships gave gay and lesbian GIs refuge from the hostility that surrounded them and allowed for a distinct subculture to develop within the military."

They still had to hide their identities for fear of persecution and a 'blue discharge', however "Gay and lesbian veterans of World War II became some of the first to fight military discrimination and blue discharges in the years following the war."

It's unclear how much Steve would have known about the gay and lesbian rights movement. But in the comics he has a gay friend Arnie Roth, and there are many meta posts (X X X) about how Steve may have lived in a queer neighbourhood.

And, according to my history professor, gay and lesbian soldiers were often protected by their friends in the army instead of outed. This is not to downplay the discrimination and pain outed veterans faced, but there was a comaraderie and understanding that developed between soldiers that protected many gay soldiers.

• Computer and the internet. The seeds of modern computers began during World War Two. Arguably it began earlier with Ada Lovelace. While technology has changed a lot for Steve, there is a long history of it's development.

Colossus Computer: Kept secret until the 70s, it's unclear if Steve's association with the SSR, Peggy (who was a code breaker before SSR) and Howard, would have led him to know anything about the "the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer", but we see electric screens and machines being used in Captain America: The First Avenger. So he would know something of those mechanisms.

Also the first American TV was broadcasted in the 1939 World Fair, And since Steve and Bucky are already shown going to a science fair, I believe it is reasonable for Steve to know about the concept of television, though it looks much different in modern day.

• Rise of Neo-Nazis. Steve already saw the rise of fascism in his own country before the war, so while I think he would be horrified and saddened to learn of the Neo-Nazi movement, I don't think he would be surprised.

Because:

Eugenics: A large part of the Nazi campaign, this part of the movement originated and was inspired by the United States Eugenics movement. "It is important to appreciate that within the U.S. and European scientific communities these ideas were not fringe but widely held and taught in universities."

Lobotomies and institutionalisations were part of the treatments for disabled and 'weak-minded' individuals during Steve's time. With Sarah being a nurse it is likely Steve knew of these treatments and more. And as a disabled child of immigrants, I have no doubts Steve brushed up with eugenics beliefs many times.

1939: More than 20,000 people attended a Nazi rally in Madison Square while "[a]bout 100,000 anti-Nazi protesters gathered around the arena in protest".

In the comics Steve canonically has a Jewish friend, Arnie Roth. If he wasn't part of the protests against the Nazi rally, he would have heard about it and known about the rise of antisemitic sentiment in the US before the outbreak of the war.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

Steve has a history of anti-racist behaviour. While he would still have a lot to learn from the Civil Rights Movement and no doubt has unconscious biases he grew up with, he also explicitly builds a multi-racial team that would have led to clashes with systemic racism in the army. This would have inevitably led to him and the Howling Commandos taking an anti-racist stance in protection of their members.

Would Steve say the N-word? Likely not. The N-Word already held negative connotations by the 19th and early-20th century. I doubt Jones would be willing to follow a man who would knowing use the insult. 'Coloured' or 'Negro' were seen as the more acceptable terms. So Steve may use those words at first, instead of 'Black' or 'African-American'. 'Negro' is a controversial term for some Black Americans, so this would be something for him to learn, but he would not purposely by insulting or hurtful. And I believe he would adapt as quickly as possible upon learning.

Steve saw the early steps of many social movements. Given what we know about Steve—artist, disabled, immigrant, poor, raised by a single mom, gay and Jewish friend, potentially lived around queer people, worked with Peggy and smiled when she punched a sexiest, and built a multi-racial team—Steve would not only be aware of the social movements of his time, but he would be happy to learn of the developments after he went into the ice.

While it would take some time for him to learn all the changes that happened, Steve's background would led him to be pleased with the changes in society. This is the opposite of being racist, sexist, and homophobic. Some things might take some adjusting for Steve to get used to, but he is already open-minded and has a frame of reference for many of the social changes that happened.

People sometimes bring up Steve's Catholic upbringing to argue about some beliefs he might have. But while I do think this upbringing would lead to some biases, I think Steve's life experience helped counter, or helped him unlearn some of those biases, even before he hit the ice.

Also, as an Irish-Catholic, Steve would have faced some discrimination of his own. It is most certainly not on the same level as other minorities, and things were better in the 20th century. Being very clear, any discrimination Steve faced for being Irish-Catholic would not be systemic or commonplace like racism. But adding his heritage to the rest of Steve's background helps give us a better idea of why he was already open to social movements like the Civil Rights movement before the ice. And it may have made him already more understanding of LGBTQ+ people, who he may have lived around, even if he grew up being taught certain biases.

Other Things We Forget About Steve

He is quite tech-savvy. While Steve would have a lot to learn, we know he is capable. There are a lot of jokes about his technical know-how in Avengers, but I think he's actually managing very well considering it's probably only been a few weeks or months since he came out of the ice.

Examples:

Deleted scene where we see Steve using a laptop in his apartment. He presses the spacebar to pause a video, which is a keyboard shortcut. So not only can he set up a laptop to watch a video, but he already knows key shortcuts.

Deleted scene where waitress mentions 'wireless'. Steve is confused and thinks she means radio. But I think he actually knows about wi-fi at this point, but probably had never heard it referred to as 'wireless' before. By this point he knows radio is not as common, so his real confusion is why the waitress is offering him 'free radio'. If she had said free wi-fi (the more typical phrase in my opinion) I think he would have understood.

Canon scene of Steve helping Tony fix the Helicarrier engines. This is my favourite evidence because Tony asks Steve to look at the relays and Steve makes a quip that they 'seem to run on some sort of electricity' indicating he is out of his depth. But we never see Tony tell Steve what to do. Steve figures out how to fix the relays himself. Tony is busy with the debris in the rotors and the next thing we see is Steve telling Tony the relays are all good.

Steve is much better at adapting and figuring out technology than we give him credit for. This doesn't mean he won't be anxious or uncomfortable with the sheer amount of stuff he has to learn (especially if everyone keeps making jokes about it to him). But by 2014, it's clear he's already mastered all of it, which is amazing when you think about it, because that's only two years of learning.

Steve is very book smart. In the comics Steve goes to art college, implying he finished high school. Even if he did drop out of high school to work, we know Steve is very smart.

We see him unloading a whole suitcase of books in the barracks before he got the serum.

The mental math is must take to throw the shield at the right angles for it to bounce back is insane.

Steve is also known as a master tactician. So it is clear he has the brains and smarts to run his team during the war. Not only that, but he is not just Captain in name. He actually has that rank, which means he passed the Captain's exam. I also have a feeling he would have needed to pass some kind of evaluation to get the serum in the first place.

We see in Steve's 2014 apartment that his bookshelves are full of history books. Steve is a veracious reader and spends a lot of his time catching up on what he missed. Things he didn't learn or were taught differently growing up would definitely exist, but Steve is actively working to counter that.

Steve would swear. Swearing has been a constant throughout all of history. So too, the backlash against profanity. Even if Steve grew up being told not to swear he would have heard it. And, Steve became a soldier. If he didn't swear before the war, he most definitely picked up some of it then.

I think Captain America isn't supposed to swear, and I think Steve would be aware of this perception of the symbol of him. But I think when Steve is comfortable with people, he would swear. We see in Avengers he doesn't swear, but in Avengers: Age of Ultron, he does.

We joke about Steve and the "Language" line, but I think that line has something to do with Steve's history of being perceived as a symbol and as Captain America since he said it 'just slipped out'. So, while Steve may have been encouraged not to swear growing up, and expected not to swear as Captain America, I fully believe that soldier, veteran, and Irish man Steve Rogers does swear.

Wrap up

I hope you liked this deep dive into Steve's history and character.

I think it can be easy to take the past as a lump sum and view everyone in the past through one lens. We know the past was racist, sexist, and homophobic, so we view everyone from the past that way.

And while it's true things were different back then, people were most definitely fighting for change and aware of the issues. There is also a lot of nuance to the past, and a lot that can be gleaned from what we know about Steve.

It's true that Steve would have a lot to learn when it comes to terminology and specific technology, but I believe Steve's background would prepare him for a lot of the social changes that happened after he went into the ice.

[ikroah]

I have reached the breaking point, the point of no return, it’s very clear to see a fool like me will never, ever learn. I have reached the breaking point, I hear the drums of doom, I’m gonna flip my wig in one great big atomic boom! —“The Breaking Point,” Bobby Darin (1966)

It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin’ #27 - Ring-a-Ding-Ding VI

Collaborative Issue! Guest Artist: @sas-afras

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Read IKROAH on Archive of Our Own

Notes / Transcript:

Notes

Huge thanks to Monty over at @sas-afras for getting this one done! I handled the original layout and lettering, but the rest was all them. Layouts like this can seem simple and easy because of how straight-forward and repetitive they are, but when all you've got are a dozen and one reaction shots, every single one of those reaction shots needs to be as perfect as you can get them. And Monty did a hell of a job. Especially on the coloring! Monty, if you're reading this, you're a hell of a good colorist (on top of everything else). Thanks again!

Another note about this issue is that it, along with the previous one, were some of the most difficult to write in this whole damn comic so far. I really hate repeating in-game dialogue verbatim without good reason, but there's really not much else I could do here. It's a very necessary part of the story that is also literally a part in the game where your character is fixed in place listening to a monologue. I took some liberties, did some punch-up, not just for its own sake but to really drive home what I find most interesting and vital here about Mr. House as a character.

Anyway, Agnes is in trouble. And there's only one issue left in Volume 2! The next one closes out this arc of the story, at long last. Stay tuned.

Transcript

INT. LUCKY 38 BASEMENT. From an observation deck of sorts, AGNES SANDS watches several SECURITRON robots position themselves in a testing area, containing several sandbags, dummies, and makeshift fortifications. A voice booms from an unseen speaker.

MR. HOUSE: You're well familiar with my Securitron police force. But have you ever wondered: what exactly makes them the marquee option in perimeter security and pacification?

AGNES glances in the direction of the voice, uncomfortable.

MR. HOUSE: Well to start, the reinforced titanium alloy housing of each unit, which protects its electronic core, easily deflects small arms and shrapnel.

MR. HOUSE: As for its offensive capabilities, its X-25 gatling laser—produced to spec by Glastinghouse, Inc.—is deadly against soft targets at medium range.

SFX: BZZTZZTZZTZZTZZT

AGNES recoils as a red glow washes over her from the testing area.

MR. HOUSE: And then for close-range suppression or crowd control, the Securitron is also armed with a 9mm sub-machinegun.

SFX: DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA

AGNES shuts her eyes, wincing from the crack of gunfire.

MR. HOUSE: These features have been sufficient for keeping the peace within Vegas, but with the NCR and Legion closing in on Hoover Dam, and sizing up my city like a piece of prize cake, more than ever we need to be prepared for, well...external conflict. Policing is one thing, but when geopolitical powers are involved, my Securitrons can only pose so much of a threat.

MR. HOUSE: That is...if they're forced to rely exclusively on their secondary weapons--as they have been, all this time!

AGNES looks upward, surprised.

MR. HOUSE: Remember, the Great War interrupted a pivotal moment for RobCo's work. Consequently, all extant Securitrons have been stuck, running on a mere Mark I operating system—the first production version of the OS—which has simply lacked the software drivers for the use of their primary weapons all this time!

AGNES looks around, as if HOUSE were in the room somewhere and she could find him, in a panic.

MR. HOUSE: The platinum chip, you see, was never just a token. At a time when industrial espionage ran rampant, it was minted as a high capacity, proprietary, and uniquely irreplicable data storage device. In a way, it's more like a computer chip. And now—with the data from the platinum chip finally installed onto my nextwork—it's time for a very crucial software update. Behold: the new Mark II Securitrons!

AGNES gawks downward at the testing area, eyes wide. Oh no.

MR. HOUSE: Their newly accessible M-235 Missile Launcher gives them the ability to engage ground and air targets at significantly longer ranges...

SFX: PSSSSSHHH KTHOOM THOOM THOOM THOOM

AGNES flinches, covering her face for protecting, and screams as explosions rip apart the testing area below.

MR. HOUSE: ...and their rapid-fire G-28 grenade launching system, another part of the Mark II, makes them much more powerful in close-range engagements as well.

SFX: THMP THMP THMP KRRSSH KRAKTK KABOOM

AGNES, nearly frozen, watches the bombardment with horror.

MR. HOUSE: It also includes rewritten drivers for the Securitrons' auto-repair systems—although always sophisticated, the new optimizations render them inexhaustible in even the most protracted and attritious of engagements. Altogether, the Mark II upgrade confers a 235% total increase in combat effectiveness per unit—and it's all because of you!

AGNES lowers her arm slowly, jaw slack, mortified.

MR. HOUSE: Vegas finally has an army—worthy to protect not just the city itself, but the best interests of all of mankind, at home and abroad. Which is to say: this simple display of might remains a mere teaser for what I can, and what I will, accomplish, in an illustrious new epoch.

AGNES sinks further into a paralytic terror.

MR. HOUSE: What we will accomplish, Agnes—should you accept my offer, of employment. Ah—but I digress. I'm certain that you've had a long day. You can rejoin Miss Cassidy in the presidential suite for the night, if you'd like to, as they say, "sleep on it."

MR. In fact...say for as long as you'd like. However long you may need, to think everything over. And you'll be very well provided for in the meantime, consider it a taste of what could be...should you make the right choice before you.

MR. HOUSE: That reminds me—I've already sent Victor to collect your belongings from the Vault 22 Hotel, so no need to exhaust yourself further by making that trip on your own, hm? There's much about your future to consider, Agnes—and I would like you to think of it as our future.

AGNES stares straight ahead with a deadened expression.

The testing area in the basement has been reduced to smithereens. Fires rage on the rubble of obliterated structures, gnarled steel, and collapsed walkways. The dummies have been dismembered entirely.

MR. HOUSE: ...Goodness, what a mass. With friends like these, I sure wouldn't envy my enemies.

MR. HOUSE: Wouldn't you agree?

[theresattrpgforthat]

I'd be interested in any dieselpunk or clockpunk recommendations you have, particularly if you play as some sort of inventor.

Theme: Clockpunk & Dieselpunk

Hello friend, I’ve got a decent number of Clockpunk or Dieselpunk settings, and while I think there might be be individual character options that allow you to play something of an inventor, I don’t think there’s anything in which you solely play as inventors. Perhaps some of my followers know of some though!

Tomorrow City, by Osprey Publishing.

Tomorrow City was one of the cities of the future, built to usher in a new age of prosperity, seizing upon scientific achievements at the dawn of the twentieth century. Then came the War. Radium-powered soldiers assembled, diesel-fuelled nightmares rolled off production lines, city fought city, and the world burned in atomic fire.

Tomorrow City still stands, an oil-stained beacon of hope, part-refuge, part-asylum. Beset by dangers from both within and without, a secret war now rages on its streets. Diesel-born monstrosities stalk the alleyways, air pirates strike from the wastelands, mad scientists continue their dark work, occultists manipulate the city’s strange geometry, and secret societies plot in the shadows.

Tomorrow City is a roleplaying game of dark science and dieselpunk action. Swift and simple character creation and an easy-to-learn dice pool system places the emphasis on unique personalities and the momentum of the plot. Join the Underground and fight the crime and corruption at the heart of the city. Sell your dieselpunk tech, occult knowledge, and sheer grit as troubleshooters for mysterious paymasters. Hunt down spies, saboteurs, and science-run-amok. As weary sky rangers, fringe scientists, and radium-powered veterans, you might be all that stands between a better tomorrow and no tomorrow at all.

This is a game that pools together your positive and negative character tags, has you roll for both and aim to come out on top. Gear is very important here, and acts as a great vehicle for communicating the kind of world that you’re living in. I don’t own this game so I can’t speak to much more than that, but if there is a big focus on gear, I’d assume that having a character that can create that gear or make it better would be fairly easy to make in this game.

Age of Steel, by Isolation Games.

Age of Steel is a dieselpunk roleplaying game set in the world of Neres; a world not unlike our own in the first few decades of the 20th century. Neres has just emerged from its first global conflict; the ‘Great War’ in which hundreds of thousands of men and women died in the mud and horror of the trenches.

Technology in Neres has taken a slightly different route to our own world; personal mecha powered by diesel engines are used for numerous applications from war to common labour; huge airships ply the airways; bipedal automata act as servants for the rich and gadgeteer inventors construct homemade ray-guns in their basement laboratories.

In the wake of the Great War, Neres is a hotbed of political scheming and economic growth. Industry and commerce have come to rule the world which, thanks to the airship, aeroplane and radio is rapidly becoming smaller. Little do the majority of people know but an ancient evil is at the heart of the conflict in their world. Eldritch monstrosities from before the dawn of time seek to unmake reality, aided by cults of insane worshippers. Into this world come the heroes -the players- who are the only thing standing between the cosmic evil and all that they hold dear.

Age of Steel uses d6s as the base for their rules, and characters are built using a point-buy system, meaning that instead of character classes, you can custom-design your character as you see fit. I think that since everything about your character is customizable, there may be some options that would help you construct an inventor-like character.

One piece of your character is your backgrounds - that is, what assets your character has to pull from as they play. Some of these assets include Cash, a Job, a Reputation, and a Personal Vehicle. Since the release of the base game, the designer has also added a free supplement called Better Backgorunds, which also includes some more character options when it comes to assets.

Steel Horizons, by Wandering Pilgrim Games.

Steel Horizons is a Dieselpunk TTRPG set on the continent of Algara. It has been 43 years since the discovery of the powerful mineral, Pyricium, which jumpstarted technology ahead decades and began the 3rd Age.

In this new world, the nations of Algara have barely survived the Great War, fought over the precious Pyricium deposits, and now seek to rebuild themselves even greater than before with the might of their technologies and cultural advancements. Using the combined power of diesel fuel, pyric energy, and the brute strength of man, the world presses ever forward.

You play as a Wanderer, a traveller making their way across the land in search of their own legacy. By choosing your own Archetype and customizable Background, you can create the Wanderer you want to tell the best story!

This is a custom system that uses d12’s for all of your rolls. While Steel Horizons is meant to be a complete setting, the creator’s overarching goal appears to be a core set of rules that can be used in a number of different settings. Currently there’s the Quickstart Guide (linked in title) that is meant to bring you through character creation and gives you some example encounters, but you can also get the Lore Keeper Codex for the Hydra System, which is the base rules without setting details, as well as the Player’s Guide, which introduces new character options for you to play with.

Clocks and Punks, by Ikari.

You are misfits in the mega city Meccavena, dwelling in your precious hideout, the Sanctuary, looking for your next gig. Your gang leader, Archelle, has dosed into an endless sleep after she stole the Anomaly Device from the Clockmaker's tower. Now, it's your job to regroup and explore that crazy, conspiracy-infused, clockwork powered city, and maybe find a way to wake Archelle up!

Clocks and Punks is a rules-light, clockpunk inspired hack on the Lasers and Feelings RPG by John Harper. As is the standard for games of this type, your characters will enter play with a goal already in mind, but how they decide to go about achieving that goal is up to them.

If you want to create an inventor character you certainly can - there are Artificer and Alchemist roles that might fit that niche, and you can create a character goal that encourages you to create or invent. You can also make your character better at CLOCK tasks, giving them an advantage when performing tasks that require precision or technical aptitude.

This game is best for a group that wants a short session, or minimal bookkeeping. It’s probably also easier to run if you have experience playing ttrpgs before, just because there’s not a lot of room for GM guidance on a single page,

Flying Fortress, by Planet Gnome.

Flying Fortress is a trifold pamphlet RPG about pulp adventure, diesel punks, and airship pirates.

This is a hack of Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland by Chris McDowall, and should be compatible with any other Mark of the Odd games.

What I really enjoy about pamphlet games is that they provide a lot of neatly organized information that is easy to navigate. This game has your character sheet on one tab, rules on another, gear on another, and then information on the back for the person running the game - things like potential enemies, factions, and roll tables. There’s no particular inventor role per se, but there are Aristocrat and Mechanic options that I think you could tailor to be more about invention if you wish.

The biggest downside to this game is that it dedicates all of its space to game info, and leaves no room for world-building, so the setting you place yourself in is going to have to be crafted whole-cloth by the play group. Then again, if your GM is a natural world-builder, maybe that’s an asset rather than a downside!

Goblins in Shadow, by Color Spray Games.

GOBLINS IN SHADOW is a roleplaying game about goblin resistance and revolution in an age of elven oppression. It’s a world of clockwork and magic, of smoke and shadow.

Players will take on the roles of a cell of goblin revolutionaries, working to undermine the elves and humans who have conquered their homeland and built an empire on its corpse. They’ll advance their goals by taking on scores, missions that gather sympathy for their cause or take direct action against their oppressors, ending in a final attempt to assassinate one of the elven ministers ruling the city. To do that, they’ll need to avoid being caught by the Watch or the Hounds, the elite special police of the city; they’ll also need to balance their obligations to the various factions of the city, as well as their own personal obligations.

The rule of elves will be broken by goblins in shadow.

As a Forged in the Dark game, this will likely be familiar to anyone who has played Blades or similar games. The core of this game is about combat, and the setting around it is clockwork. If you want to play an inventor type character, there looks to be a playbook called The Hand, equipped for sabotage and front-lines engineering. Just through skimming the playbooks I feel like a lot of pieces of the world around you are baked into your playbooks - for example, the Hand might have been branded by an entropic form of goblin magic that allows you to invoke rapid decay or drain life. Now that’s evocative!

[edaworks]

Wasteland Survival Guide: The Institute, Fusion Reactors, and M.I.T.'s Actual Basement

It's that time again. Periodically I make unreasonable longposts about Fallout-related topics (it's a good way to keep track of fic research). Today I'm tackling nuclear fusion, the Institute, and the real-world Massachusetts Institute of Technology's basement.

Yeah, Yeah, M.I.T. is the Institute, We've All Seen - Wait, What Do You Mean, "The Vault Laboratory?"

M.I.T. - the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - is a highly exclusive research university with a well-deserved reputation for hosting brilliant minds.

It also got its serial numbers filed off in order to host the in-game Institute. Why? Probably because of all the very real research into robotics, artificial intelligence, and power armor (no really). And because M.I.T. is actually doing now what the Institute tries to do in-game with nuclear fusion.

And, of course, because of the vaults in the basement.

You know what? I'll just start at the top...Read on below.

I'll be focusing on fusion-related research in this post, and comparing in-game Institute work on fusion to what's actually happening over at M.I.T. (We'll get to the Media Laboratory and robotics and AI and the, uhm, power armor stuff in a separate post. Or three.)

all actual M.I.T. researchers/faculty/students and/or nuclear physicists have my sincere apologies, I don't know shit about shit but I'm doing my best

I Didn't Sign Up for a Physics Class, but Okay

Here's the thing about nuclear fusion generators - y'know...the ones powering nearly** the entirety of pre-war in-game America?

Including self-contained, miniaturized reactors (fusion cores, fusion cells, microfusion cells, Corvega engines, assaultron and robobrain power supplies, recharger weapons, G.E.C.K.s, etc.) and full-scale reactors (powering vaults, the Lucky 38, the Prydwen (and Rivet City before Maxson Happened), missile silos, etc.)...?

We don't have them yet.

Of course we have nuclear power generation, what are you talking about?

Yes - but nuclear power plants currently operating use fission reactors! Fusion reactors, though? Well...

For the pre-war in-game universe, even more than for us, that fuel-to-energy ratio would have been absurdly important. Companies rushed to implement fusion for damn near every possible use, but waited until the Resource Wars left them no other choice. "No more (viable) oil reserves? Well, shit. Fusion it is."

Because of this, by October 23, 2077, pre-war Western markets were still somewhat new to adopting miniaturized nuclear fusion reactors.

For instance, Chryslus' first fusion vehicles - intentionally reminiscent of the absolutely wild Ford Nucleon concept car dreamed up in 1957 - came to market in 2070, less than a decade before the nuclear exchange.

As for the other benefits of nuclear fusion...Atom knows the in-game universe could do with less radioactive contamination:

It is no wonder the Institute wants to get the reactor in their basement up, running, and running better than originally designed.

Real-life M.I.T. is no stranger to running fusion reactors - they've been at it since the late '60s - but as it turns out, they are currently also "building a better mousetrap," and if they succeed they will be achieving all the Institute would hope for in clean energy production - without the moral deficit.

If nuclear fusion is so great, why aren't we using this technology yet IRL?

Because - and I cannot stress this enough - we are attempting to levitate bits of the Sun inside a donut to make really hot things boil water* so steam will turn a fan attached to a dynamo to power light bulbs.

*(there are two other ways to generate power using this heat)

Naturally...this comes with some complications.

We know fusion reactors can be the most energy-efficient form of power generation - we just need better reactors. That's where M.I.T. comes in.

The biggest problem right now is efficiency:

TL;DR - as of April 2024, all fusion reactors as a matter of course still consume more power to run than they are able to produce (meaning they do not reach "breakeven"). Many cutting-edge reactors also require tritium (very rare) as well as deuterium (very common) fuel.

We did not even see a fusion reaction that reached "breakeven" for power production until December of 2022. That reaction occurred at the National Ignition Facility in California, and their results just passed peer review in February of this year (2024).

Several in-progress reactors aim to improve on this, including ITER (the combined work of dozens of nations) in France, and SPARC: the new reactor under development by Mass Fusion Commonwealth Fusion Systems and M.I.T.'s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC).

Another big problem with this technology is that it involves plasma.

Plasma, as a particular song reminds us, is what the Sun is made of and The Sun Is Hot. That means plasma carries some very real 'we're-losing-structural-integrity, the-warp-core-is-breaching' risks, and we must jump through all kinds of hoops to work with it.

Why are we shoving the Sun inside a donut, again?

The most well-funded, well-researched way of smashing atoms together involves plasma and magnetic confinement fusion.

This shit is beyond cool. It may also look very familiar:

In-game, the Institute is trying to get what appears to be a spherical tokamak reactor up and running.

Bethesda's choice of reactor was no coincidence: M.I.T. operated the Alcator C-Mod, a spherical tokamak, while Fallout 4 was under development - but that reactor could not achieve "breakeven" IRL, and per Shaun's in-game dialogue, the fictional Alcator C-Mod couldn't either. (Weird given the miniaturized fusion devices everywhere in-universe, but okay, Shaun.)

However, M.I.T. stopped operating that reactor in 2016, a year after Fallout 4's release. SPARC, their planned replacement reactor actually has the sort of power potential we see in-game - and they aim to bring fusion power to market in this decade.

M.I.T., right now, in real life, is doing exactly what you're asked to help the Institute do in-game: build a fusion reactor that surpasses "breakeven."

What the hell is a tokamak and why does it look like half of a Star Trek warp core?

Your typical tokamak reactor is a great big donut-shaped vacuum chamber (the torus), traditionally surrounded by AT LEAST three sets of electromagnets (sometimes many more). M.I.T.'s design for the new SPARC reactor is a bit different, but let's start with the basics.

Why so many magnets?

Because plasma, being Literal Sun Matter, cannot come into contact with the torus containment walls or it will instantly burn through. (This happened in France in 1975. Following initial "well, fuck"s and a couple years' repairs, the logical next step was to publish a paper about it.)

The magnetic fields work to heat the plasma and provide current drive (keep electrons moving in a consistent direction through the plasma and around the torus), while also keeping it from touching anything, preventing a "warp core breach." I'll take a stab at explaining it but the Department of Energy probably does it better.

Meet the magnets:

Toroidal field magnets (blue, above): These enormous D-shaped magnets wrap around and through the torus, conducting an electrical current. This creates a magnetic field that keeps plasma from drifting horizontally into the containment walls.

Central solenoid (green, above): Inside the "donut hole" sits a massive, stacked electromagnet that generates enough electromagnetic force to launch two space shuttles at once. This heats the fuel to about one hundred million degrees Celsius so that it reaches plasma state, and helps "drive" the plasma current around the torus. (Radiofrequency or neutral beam injection heating/drive may be used as well for reactor prototypes aiming for power generation, because current drive from just the solenoid isn’t practical for continuous operation.) The central solenoid also creates another magnetic field called the "poloidal field," which "loops" around the plasma like a collar to prevent it from drifting vertically into the walls. The strongest central solenoid in existence was made for the ITER reactor...by General Atomics.

Outer poloidal field magnets (grey, above): A third set of electromagnets "stacks" up the outside of the torus, and helps maintain and adjust the poloidal field.

Together these three sets of magnets force the plasma to "float" inside the torus, shape it, and provide current drive. The stronger the magnetic field, the higher the reactor's power output.

Okay, and then what?

Given sufficient heat and drive/stability, the plasma fuel mixture undergoes fusion.

Neutrons released during fusion have plenty of kinetic energy (the kind of energy a kickball has midair before it hits you in the face), but no electric charge.

Since magnetic fields only affect negatively or positively charged particles, neutrons completely ignore the fields, sailing straight through and slamming into a "blanket" of metal coating the donut's insides. Neutrons passing into the 'blanket" lose their kinetic energy, which is converted to heat and absorbed by the "blanket." (ITER's "blanket" involves a lot of beryllium, which...behaves a bit differently IRL than it does in-game.)

Heat captured by the "blanket" is then used to generate power. For instance, a water cooling system can bleed heat from the "blanket," regulating temperature and creating superheated highly-pressurized steam to run turbine generators.

I notice you described a "typical" tokamak above -what's the atypical option?

Check out SPARC.

Its huge design departure is that it uses new high-temperature superconducing magnets (most existing types have to be cooled to vacuum-of-space temperatures using something like a liquid helium system to achieve superconductivity, which is a huge power drain) to create a monstrous magnetic field - and its size is tiny in comparison to its projected power output.

Neat. So why did you refer to plasma as a problem?

Well...between the heat and the neutrons, the "blanket," the "first wall" and all plasma-facing surfaces inside the torus take one hell of a beating:

"Neutron degradation of wall surfaces-" "Energy is released in the form of the kinetic energy of the reaction products-" In practical terms, that just means countless neutrons are doing THIS:

...but to the containment wall and other surfaces inside the torus, instead of to Batshuayi's face. And so:

Basically, this stuff breaks fast enough - and the only materials that don't break quickly are rare enough - to create a real barrier to commercial use.

And THIS is one of the problems they're working on solving in M.I.T.'s basement.

Now we can talk about the Vault. FINALLY.

M.I.T. is home to the Center for Science and Technology with Accelerators and Radiation (CSTAR). CSTAR's splash page announces:

Linear plasma devices? You mean like -

No, not like plasma rifles. Instead of weapons, we're talking about tools being used to solve the "plasma fucking destroys everything it touches" problem.

How does CSTAR do this? They've got CLASS. ...No, really:

This field is called plasma-surface interaction science, and if you want a really long but very informative read on how CSTAR's work helps move it forward, check this out. It involves the DIONISOS Linear Plasma Device - a "let's shoot it with plasma and see what happens" tool.

CSTAR also works to better undertstand how materials handle radiation damage, and how they behave after becoming irradiated.

And to handle this sort of work, one needs a...

The Vault Laboratory for Nuclear Science "combines high-intensity particle sources, precision particle detection, and a heavily shielded experimental area to create a facility for nuclear research in high-radiation environments." It contains, among other things:

the DT Neutron Generator, which is used in a variety of experiments, including radiation detector development (pretty damned important) and characterization, fast neutron imaging, and material activation (stuff becoming radioactive).

the DANTE Tandem Accelerator, which was "originally designed to produce high neutron yields for use in cancer therapy research."

And that is what's actually going on in M.I.T.'s basement: truth is cooler than fiction.

The takeaways:

Yes, M.I.T. really is building a revolutionary fusion reactor with parts from Mass Fusion Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

Yes, there really is a secure underground facility where incredibly advanced research related to nuclear fusion, radiation detection, irradiated materials, and degradation of materials due to radiation exposure takes place.

Yes, I really would spend eight hours researching nuclear physics instead of doing more dishes. Shoutout to @twosides--samecoin for tolerating my absurd hyperfocus on researching this.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk on what M.I.T. is really doing in its basement.

Tune in next time for M.I.T.'s Media Laboratory, and how it is related to real-world power armor, plus: the relationship between Langley, P.A.M.'s IRL cousin, and Vault 101.

** (Fallout is wildly inconsistent re: how widespread fusion is in-game and when it was developed. I mean we're talking a two-decade spread of inconsistency! And somehow the technology - first available to the military - was then miniaturized and made available to the general public before becoming widespread for commercial power generation? And somehow we both do and don't have impossible cold fusion in game? It's a mess. I reject this reality and replace it with a fish, hence this post. Also, I hate fission batteries. don't talk to me about fission batteries, "fission batteries" are small fission reactors but they are definitely not "battery sized" - the "fission batteries" in-universe are so miniaturized that they are more likely another kind of atomic battery like a radioisotope thermoelectric generator and those are subject to a law of diminishing returns as the fuel decays/not producing a reasonably useful power output after over 200 years due to the isotopes normally used/can be VERY dangerous if the shielding is breached or removed, and - you know what, that's also a whole different post.)

[vulpinesaint]

by the way. gravity by maura o'connor.

Gravity by Maura O’Connor

Today I am fragile pale twitching insane and full of purpose.

I’m thinking of my lover: my soft hips pressing his coarse belly my tongue on a salmon nipple, his hand buried in my thick orange hair the telephone ringing.

I’m thinking we tend our illnesses  as if they are our children: fevered screaming demanding attention and twenty dollar bills, hours we could have spent making love with the television on.

Faith is a series of calculations made by an idiot savant. I’m in love. I’m alone in this city of painted boxes stacked like alphabet blocks spelling nothing.

There are things I know: trees don’t sing birds don’t sprout leaves the sky never turns to wine roses bloom because that’s what roses do, whether we write poems for them or not.

I concentrate on small things:  ivy threaded through chain link, giveaway kittens huddled in a soggy cardboard box, a fat man blowing harmonica through a beard of rusty wires brown birds chattering furiously on power lines.

I try not to think about lung cancer, AIDS, the chemicals in the rain; things I can’t imagine any more than a color I’ve never seen

My heart is graffiti on the side of a subway train, a shadow on the wall made by a child. Nothing has been fair since my first skinned knee I believe death must be.

I cling to love as if it were an answer. I go on buying eggs and bread,  boots and corsets, knowing I’ll burn out before the sun.

I’m thinking of the days I tried to stay awake while the billboards and T.V. ads for condoms, microwave brownies, and dietetic jello lulled me to sleep.

A brown-eyed girl once told me a secret that should have blown this city into a mass of unconnected atoms Our sewage is piped to the sea.  Beggars in the street are hated for having the nerve to die in public. 

Charity requires paperwork, Relief requires medication

as if we were the afterthoughts of institutions greater than our rage.

Gravity chains us to the asphalt with such grace we think it is kind.

We all go on buying lottery tickets Diet Coke and toothpaste as if the sky over our heads were the roof of a gilded cage.

We provide evidence that we were here: initials cut into cracked vinyl bus seats, into trees growing from squares in concrete, a name left on a stone, an office building, a flower, a disease, a museum a child.

Tonight the stars glitter like rhinestones on a black suede glove.

In the coffin my room has become,  I talk to God about the infrequency of the rain about people who can’t see the current of gentleness running under the pale crust of my skin.

I tell him under the jackhammer crack, the diesel truck rumble, even the clicking sound traffic lights make switching from yellow to red, there is a silence swallowing every song, conversation, every whisper made beside graves or in the twisted white sheets of love.

I tell him I can’t fill it with dark wine, blue pills, a pink candle lit at the altar the lover touching my hair.

God doesn’t answer. God doesn’t know our names.

He’s only the architect designing the places we occupy like high rise offices or ant hills

I know this  the way I know sunrise and sunset are caused by the endless turning of the Earth.

[flowery-laser-blasts]

How would the first meeting between Drakken and Shego’s brothers would go?

Good question! First technical meeting was during the episode 'Go team Go' but that was barely anything. Let me try and write down how I think a first meeting would go:

So I suppose after the episode, the next best meeting could be during a family orientated holiday (Thanksgiving or Christmas). It would be very likely that Hego, after finding out where Drakken's Lair is located, would send an invitation for them to visit during the holiday; no hero activities, no villain activities just family stuff + Drakken. Drakken is a sucker for family orientated outings (See the yearly evil family picnic that he organises for his henchmen and the time he celebrated Christmas with first only Ron and then with the Possibles and Shego).

If Drakken gets his hands on the invitation first: Drakken might keep it a secret from Shego and makes her come along with him to GoCity under the guise of "We're going there for evil shopping" or anything and 'coincidentally' bumping into Hego.

If Shego gets get hands on the invitation: Shego will probably burn it and toss it away. However, she won't wait for it to burn out (like the photo strip of her and Kim in 'Stop team Go'). So Drakken might see it and stomp it out, see the address and could potentially read that it's an invite and then do the same as the previous part, go to Go-city.

Alternative: Drakken invites team Go to the lair for a family reunion.

Drakken and Hego would formally introduce themselves to each other and Shego would try and go away but gets stopped by the Wegos who surround her with hugs. Eventually she just gives up and everyone goes to GoTower or Lair.

Drakken + the Go brothers impressions:

Wegos & Drakken: The twins would probably be neutral over Drakken. He looks a tad boring to them compared to the Go villains. They are mischievous though and first pretend to be 1 sibling, making Drakken confused because he thought they were twins, then triplets??? Quintuplets?!? "Oh, just twins with multiplication powers, haha of course--." Drakken would also think they're around the age of Kim's brothers so he got them a pranksters' science kit as present. "How to build an atomic whoopy cushion? Neat!". Drakken is okay in their book.

Mego & Drakken: A looooooooooong silence between them. Mego and Drakken would probably start with having the least common interests, but something they both like to talk about is themselves. One would start talking about some anecdotes connecting to their line of work, then in turns they interrupt each other to tell another 'funny story that I just remembered cause of this story'. The conversation then turns into talking about Shego. Both of them then bond over getting onto Shego's nerves.. until Shego interrupts them "Hahaha, oh that's funny-- hey don't stop talking about me now, you guys seemed to have so much fun!" "Yes, uh, well, we're just--" "Boy! All that socialising sure dried up my throat. I'll get myself a water, would you like some too, Doctor Drakken?" "Why, yes Mego, here let me help you!!" And both of them hurry away into the kitchen before Shego can say anything. They also compliment each other's hairdo but secretly think it looks lame and theirs looks better.

Hego & Drakken: I feel like this is a double edged sword. They both like the Oh Boyz and probably would sing Karaoke during the party (making Shego and Mego cringe in their seats). They could talk about the fastfood industry/horeca in general and maybe Hego likes Snowman Hank as well.

Now the negative aspect. I think at one point during the party, Drakken might ask Hego something along the lines of "So, you are okay with your sister being evil? Running from the law? A super Villain's sidekick?" and Hego laughs it off, replying "Oh, yeah well, I'm not that worried. You see, if she's paired up with the likes of you, it'll be ok." At first Drakken might be flattered but then, "What do you mean, "paired up with the likes of me"?"

Hego explains that he knows that Drakken is no 'real villain'. After first seeing him, he looked up everything about Drakken in a villain database and concluded that Drakken is no real threat, at least not like the true villains that terrorise GoCity (according to him). Shego probably is the safest with Drakken cause she'll never be in real danger because of his shenanigans. Drakken will get fired up because this definetely hurts his ego. He will start getting real angry and tries picking a fight with Hego, telling him he's probably the reason that Shego left for villainy, because he's such a goodie two shoes that controls everyone like they're tools to get him in the best light and adoration of the city. Hego and Drakken will eventually get closer to actual fighting but Shego steps in, scolding both of them hard. "This is exactly why I didn't want to come." Shego grabs Drakken by his collar and heads out.

It's not the most perfect first meeting, but it's a first meeting nonetheless. I hope you liked my take on it!

[blood-injections]

Came across my sort of headcanon masterdoc for how BLI was started that I all wrote down because I have an au in my drafts that deals with the creation of BLI and the killjoys and danger days universe if the Fab Four were there since the very beginning and how they went from normal teenagers to rebels fighting a war and. holy SHIT guys this shit is genius and I totally forgot about it all. Anyway figured I’d finally post some of it.

As we all know, canon information on the formation of Better Living and how the country became a postapocalyptic, irradiated dead zone is… scarce to say the least. We know that there were the Helium/Atomic wars but don’t know if those are separate wars or two names for the same thing. We know that the great fires happened in 2012 and that they were a possible cause for the rise of Better Living. We know the pig bomb was dropped in 2017 thanks to a Cherri Cola tweet and if I remember correctly it was dropped in Texas(literally can’t remember if that’s canon or part of my shit) and probably related to the wars, which apparently took place not long before the music videos. We know that the further out into the zones you go the more radiation there is and that as of 2019 the zones get acid rain. And we also know that Australia somehow just up and disappeared which is by far the most eldritch canon detail about the dd universe.

But that’s it.

So I have built upon the breadcrumbs of canon and just sweeped some under the rug and done quite the feat of worldbuilding to explain how BLI and the killjoys came to be.

In my mind it all starts in 2012, but it’s probably been in the works for decades. There were conspiracy theories of corrupt governments and secret societies but nobody knew the true extend of it. One second the country was running as normal, the next the government was taken down by people in its own ranks, people that have lied their way to the top and were secretly working together just to take over. In a day the country falls, America attacks itself. Communications are cut off along with everything else that society needs to function. Power is shut off nationwide, satellites are disabled, missiles(non nuclear) shoot into the air just to turn around and attack the very land they hailed from. From the ashes of America rise the corrupt individuals that made it all happen, with the woman that’ll become known as the director at the helm of it all. They form a new government and try to round up the survivors, intent on creating a utopia from the rubble.

I have no idea what’s going on with other countries if they help or if this new government attacked any other countries or just its own or if a world war is essentially started I just figure since canon didn’t touch on it and nobody else ever does I won’t either. Use your imagination I guess.

But it’s 2012, the country is in shambles, the biggest cities have fallen, smoke covers the land. The great fires of 2012 start not a week after the demolition of the USA, beginning as fires from burning cities that cause surrounding land to catch light and later on, its deliberate napalm to shape the path of the fires and drive people out of their shelters, using the destructive powers of Mother Nature to literally herd survivors to certain areas of the country.

The great fires quickly lead to the start of the Helium/Atomic wars, which are two names for what’s the same fight, but different sections of it. The helium wars come first, a rebellion to the new government was quickly formed by what remained of uncorrupt military and control over weapons are essentially split between the two sides. An all out war breaks out and the sides start off evenly matched, the numbers of those loyal to the new government and those remaining images of what fell fairly well matched.

A month after civilization falls the new government drops the first nuke on New York City already demolished by the first missiles, its now doomed to be a nuclear wasteland as well. It seems like this would be called the atomic war, with the use of atomic bombs, but it’s not. This is the true start of the helium war, for it seems both sides are suddenly eyeing the precious resource, for who has control over its production might very well come out on top of this fight, for helium is used in everything from medical technology to space exploration and national defense. It’s used for welding and in rocket fuel and nuclear reactors and yes, nuclear weapons. And it’s already a finite resource, non renewable and already said to be running out. And now in this ruined country there’s more of a demand for it then ever. And guess what? The United States is the biggest producer of helium worldwide, with the largest helium deposit located in Texas.

It’s unclear which side drops the second nuke, but what matters is that it falls smack dab on top of that deposit. It seems desperate times call for desperate measures and the desperate measures were to wipe out the source of advancement for the war completely. It becomes known as the pig bomb.

The fight goes on for two years during which the new government builds ‘safe zones,’ aka walled cities for survivors to head to, just to get trapped in and made to work. The rebellion is diminishing and unfortunately the enemy is winning. Then the third and final nuke is dropped, once again by the new government. It’s discovered that the rebellion was actually the side to drop the pig bomb, but it did pay a crucial blow to the enemy and helium remains scarcer than ever, meaning they must limit what the manufacture and how they build.

The third nuke is dropped northeast of the pig bomb, around Wyoming , and the sick thing is it doesn’t do that much. The country there is already burned flat so it wipes out a good chunk of the rebellion that was hiding in the Midwest but other than that all it does is drive the last of the survivors to the far west, where the ruins of LA and the biggest of the safe zones resides. The placement of the nukes really locks off this to-be battery city and the zones, trapping them in a big irradiated box.

At this point numbers in both sides have dwindled and fighting has died off, not to a standstill, but the last bomb marks the official end of the helium wars as the last survivors trickle into the LA safe zone and the surviving rebels hide just outside it, in the fairly untouched desert and ghost towns that litter the borders. Supplies on both sides are running low and this quiet period of rebuilding and recollecting becomes known as the dust bowl.

The west is pretty much uninhabitable aside from this chunk of land and the rest if the country is all burnt up and cut off and the northeast is a no-go zone to radiation and in fact the entire east coast has essentially fallen into a nuclear winter, fucked up from the trade winds carrying over the radiation and ash clouds from the pig bomb and the great fires and even after two years they sky never seems to clear. The entire eastern half of the united states is a wasteland of dust storms, acid rain, pockets of radiation, and thanks to permanently altered weather patterns due to rapid Atlantic climate change from all the ash and radiation clogging the atmosphere, that means the coast is under attack from a constant barrage of deadly cyclones, meaning even if it wasn’t irradiated, living there is impossible due to the monthly high winds and flooding and all the horrible things cooking up in that ocean.

For anyone that didn’t make it to the LA safe zone, still stuck in survivable pockets of the country in the Midwest or even in the deadly east, none of them are going to last long for sure. Anyone that didn’t head west while they could has to watch out for whoever is left there with them, scrounging for resources. Looting gangs and desperate madmen roam these states and they won’t show mercy. It’s kill or be killed beyond the wall of radiation that now separates the far west from the rest of the country.

That quiet time known as the dust bowl passes slowly and at some point the LA safe zone becomes known as Battery City and the safe areas around it and the small bit of the west coast not ravaged by radiation or fires become known as the zones, numbered one through seven by how risky they are to inhabit, one being the safest, just beyond the city walls, and seven being the most dangerous, with the highest levels of radiation. They’re not perfect circles like the canon maps, since there some small dead pockets of radiation and stretches of ash land(fire ravaged areas) that are deemed inhabitable. The zones are also much larger than canon, stretching out into the edge of Arizona and maybe even Utah and Nevada.

All levels of the zones are desert wastelands, but go north and that’s the ash lands, the giant stretches of land burnt through by the great fires. The fires took months to die out and some are still burning, but the empty areas on the edge of the north zones are a true wasteland, the soil contaminated by the vast amounts of ash that coated it and if you drive through it you just kick it all up, then you can’t get out of your car or you can hardly breathe. Step onto that dead land and it’s completely barren, it feels like another world. Nothing grows, not a sprout is to be seen, just the vast dark, dead, soil. As time passes and the zones get a culture, they say that’s where you go to die, they say it’s filled with ghosts.

But back to Battery city, it’s 2016, the dust bowl period is coming to an end and each side has been rebuilding. The city is shinier then ever and the new government, now calling themselves Better Living Industries, is putting all their resources into medical experiments and technological improvements, working on robots and AI and mind altering medication. With each passing month the citizens seem to become more sated and meanwhile in the desert, the rebels are having some improvements of their own. After the last bomb fell and everyone headed to the zones and the rebellion survivors found each other, they had to spend time figuring out how to survive while avoiding the city and whatever was happening within, but now it’s been a couple years of recuperation, and the rebellion has been planning. They’ve heard of the experiments Better Living has been doing and what’s going on with the citizens and they’ve decided it’s time to stop just surviving and start fighting again, and this marks the start of the Analog Wars, a much smaller scale fight, free of missiles and bombs, it’s just one side against the other with mainly handheld weapons. It’s named for the rebellions reliance on analog equipment like radios and other older devices since there’s no normal communications or electronics available. They use things like morse code and secret messages to communicate via the airwaves and this is where Doctor Death Defying gets his big role. He was a marine turned Helium War survivor and veteran, losing his legs in the fight, and now he may not be able to be on the front lines but he mans the radio and somehow always stays positive, spreading news and hope through the zones. He coins the term Killjoys for the rebellion and this is the time when the zones culture starts blossoming, with Doctor Death coming up with most of the slang, originating as unique code words to let rebels what’s going on and where without BLI figuring out what they’re talking about, and the young folks somehow taking the lead in the fight instead of the few veterans that remain. They’re not trained soldiers, just people fighting for what’s right, and that’s what makes them dangerous. The rebellion gets their hands on some of BLIs weapons, the laser guns, making their fight more equal. The Fab Four pop up around this time and they inspire people across the zones, a team of four friends that found each other in the apocalypse, they’re still pretty much kids but now they’re leading the fight against BLI. They remember how life used to be but as the years pass and they really become soldiers, they start to forget, until all they know is the desert and a life that’s a cycle of violence and hope, life as killjoys.

When 2019 comes around and the events of the music videos may or may not happen, it’s still technically the Analog War but the term isn’t really used anymore, since it’s just life for everyone at this point, having weekly skirmishes with BLI goons, which start turning up as dracs and scarecrows instead of just soldiers in 2017.

But it’s 2019, we’re all caught up, it’s life in the zones as we know it, and that’s all I have for you today.

[nicklloydnow]

On Today’s Episode of World War III

“On Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed our worst suspicions concerning the pace of Iran’s nuclear weaponization program. “Iran,” it concluded, “has increased the rate at which it is producing near weapons grade uranium in recent weeks, reversing a previous slowdown that started in the middle of this year.”

According to the IAEA, Iranian enrichment of Uranium-235 to near weapons-grade level had increased to an estimated 9 kilograms per month by the end of November. It takes just five times that amount of uranium, enriched to 90 percent, to sustain a nuclear chain reaction for one nuclear bomb.

Presently, it is believed that Iran has enriched at least 128.3 kilograms of Uranium-235 to 60 percent, and 567.1 kilograms to 20 percent. Do the math based on Iran Watch’s estimates of its current centrifuge capacity, and Iran is now capable of enriching sufficient mass to 90 percent for three nuclear bombs in less than one week. Tehran could have a fourth bomb in one to two weeks more, and a fifth within roughly one month’s time.

(…)

We are in a very different world now than when that deal was first made. Moscow and Beijing are actively engaged in the equivalent of an ideological World War III against the U.S. that is increasingly turning kinetic. Iran has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to undermine U.S. diplomacy and national security interests throughout the Middle East.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind the funding and planning of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. Tehran’s plunging of Gaza into war undermined U.S. efforts to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and Iran-sponsored militias including Hezbollah and the Houthis are actively attacking U.S. military and naval forces in Iraq, Syria, Red Sea, and Gulf of Aden.

As his country nears a nuclear breakout, Khamenei is only becoming bolder. On Dec. 23, the Pentagon reported that the Chem Pluto, a chemical tanker sailing from Saudi Arabia to India, was struck in the Indian Ocean “by a drone launched from Iran.” Iranian threats against the West and Europe are also starting to come fast and furious. On Christmas Eve, Tehran threatened to close the Straits of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea.

Iran will become bolder still if allowed to achieve nuclear status. We are on borrowed time now, rapidly approaching the point wherein a kinetic response will be the only option remaining.

(…)

On the Doomsday Clock, it is already five minutes and counting past midnight in Armageddon. Unless the White House acts now, Iran’s status as a nuclear power will be a fait accompli.”

“More than 100 people were killed and scores injured Wednesday in two blasts that struck the central Iranian city of Kerman, emergency services said. Thousands of mourners had gathered there to commemorate Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani on the fourth anniversary of his assassination in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in 2020.

A spokesman for the country’s emergency department was quoted by Iran’s state-run news agency as saying 103 people were killed and 188 were injured.

The deputy governor of Kerman, the slain general’s hometown, said the incident was a “terrorist attack,” according to Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). The explosions occurred about a half-mile from Soleimani’s burial place, on a road to the graveyard, the agency reported.

(…)

The blasts Wednesday came amid intensifying involvement by Iranian-backed militant groups in a confrontation with Israel and its principal backer, the United States, during Israel’s war in Gaza.”

“Hamas on Tuesday accused Israel of killing Saleh al-Arouri, a top leader of the group, along with two commanders from its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. Mr. al-Arouri is the senior-most Hamas figure to be killed since Israel vowed to destroy the organization and eliminate its leadership after a deadly Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7.

Mr. al-Arouri was assassinated in an explosion in a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, marking the first such assassination of a top Hamas official outside the West Bank and Gaza in recent years. It comes as officials across the region are worried about the war in Gaza igniting a wider conflagration.

(…)

“No one is safe if they had any hand in planning, raising money for or carrying out these attacks,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal discussions. Citing Israel’s vow to hunt down the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 attack wherever they are, the official added, “This is just the beginning, and it’ll go on for years.”

(…)

Mr. al-Arouri played a key role in Hamas’s relationships with its regional allies and in increasing Hamas’s military capabilities, according to regional and Western officials. A longtime Hamas operative, he was one of the founders of the group’s armed wing and was linked to a number of attacks on Israeli civilians, including the kidnapping and killing of three teenagers in the West Bank in 2014, which he called a “heroic operation.”

(…)

Mr. al-Arouri worked with Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s chief in Gaza, in recent years to link the group’s military wing more closely to Iran, which, regional security officials say, most likely helped the group develop some of the capabilities it used in the Oct. 7 attack. Israel has accused Mr. Sinwar of helping to plot the assault, which officials say killed about 1,200 people and saw 240 others abducted to Gaza.

(…)

Israel for decades has made assassinations of its enemies in other countries a key part of its defense strategy. In the past two weeks, Iran has accused Israel of assassinating two Iranian generals in Iraq and Syria who liaised with the regional militant groups backed by Iran. Israel has also carried out high-profile assassinations of senior Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists in Iran and Syria, including Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and Col. Sayad Khodayee, a commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.”

[flipping-the-coin]

Cybertron civil war will break out cuz Megatron was pardoned? Its hard to believe he retired just like that cuz he got his conjunx back. Do you ever worry about it? Do you just count on Pax to keep him under control or???

[[TRANSMISSION RECEIVED: SUBJECT = QUERY…. SCANNING…. 92% THREAT LEVEL NULL = NO THREAT LEVEL CATAGORIZATION: REROUTING…. SECONDARY SCANS COMPLETE: TRANSMISSION = WITHIN PARAMETERES]]

[[TRANMISSION FORWARDED…. RECEIVED = SEEN]]

[[//RESPONSE IN PROGRESS… RESPONSE COMPLETE: TRANSMISSION SENT//]]

═════════════════

I do worry greatly when it comes to Megatron, anonymous one. He is a powerful mech, one with great influence. He knows he has sway too, and yet he chooses to do nothing with it. As much as I understand and wish to keep Megatron alive and active for the sake of Cybertron, I do constantly fear that one cycle he may decide to act again. He is... wiser than I am, at least in the ways of revolution. I was made for war, he was made for change. We are different, and I fear that should he decide to remove me from my position, he would not experience much of a struggle doing so. Duty demands that if he comes with an army and the lives of innocents held hostage, I can not fight back. The people come first, and thus if he really wished me dead, there is little I could do so long as he had the backing of the population.

With that said, I mostly trust Orion Pax to keep Megatron in line. Orion is only known to become aggressive when attacked in some capacity. Thus, so long as Orion is left alone and allowed to air his grievances from time to time, Megatron is the kind of mech to remain docile. Of course Megatron does need something to keep him entertained and busy, but for that, according to my guardsmecha, a special unit has been deployed to keep him occupied. I do not know who this agent is, but I pray for their safety and sanity in their efforts to ensure Megatron remains civil.

However in the event that everything falls apart and Megatron rises unprompted or without warning... I have a failsafe in mind. I have yet to install it simply because I am not fond of the idea... but the tunnel systems that run all over Cybertron have long been unused, and while highly detrimental to any of my heirs, I could have the tunnels destroyed. This would cause whole cities to collapse in on themselves, and not only that, it would give me time to muster my own forces and fight back. It is a last resort, one I dare not consider too deeply. The fact that I did not use this method during the war should tell you a great deal about how severe this action would be. The effects would be devastating all across Cybertron... but it is an option. In the event that I cannot access the tunnels, there is also another way I could put an end to Megatron with far more limited casualties at the cost of myself.

My spark is essentially a small star, at least according to readings. It would kill me, but I could theoretically destabilize my spark and turn myself into a living atomic bomb. At that point I would have a limited time to get to my location before my frame and the Matrix fail and my spark detonates. But this too is an option, it is a last resort of last resorts. Although again, I dare not consider it too deeply. Not only do I not wish to die if possible, but such destruction would still be enough to wipe out a city. Megatron is a very real threat, but unless I plan to use apocalyptic methods to eliminate him in the worst case scenario, I must try to ease myself with the knowledge that Orion Pax can keep him in line better than I ever would be able to.

═════════════════

[[TRANSMISSION SENDER = OPTIMUS PRIME = PRIME OF CYBERTRON: LEADER OF THE AUTOBOTS: PRIMUS’S ANGEL: SAVIOR OF CYBERTRON: LOREKEEPER: SIRE]]

[[TRANSMISSION ENDS]]

[evilmario666]

You have already grasped that Mario is the absurd hero. He is absurd as much through his passions for golf, tennis, and karting as through his torture of 2-dimensional platforming. His scorn of Bowser, his hatred of homicidal turtles, and his passion for 1-Up’s won him that unspeakable penalty in which his whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.

Shigeru Miyamoto and others at Nintendo have condemned Mario to walk ceaselessly to the right toward a castle to save one “Princess Peach,” whence he would find that the princess was in another identical castle further to the right.

And at the very end of his long effort measured in eight levels in eight worlds (naturally excluding warp pipes or warp whistles), Mario rescues the princess. Then the console resets, Princess Peach gets captured by Bowser, and Mario must descend back to World 1-1 whence he will have to rescue her again.

Opinions differ as to how Mario became the futile and hopeless laborer of the Mushroom Kingdom. If one believes the instruction manual accompanying the game, Mario is a stout middle-aged Italian man from Brooklyn. According to another tradition, he is portrayed by Bob Hoskins. I see no contradiction in this.

But we must agree that Mario is a plumber. Perhaps he came to the Mushroom Kingdom to repair the green pipes casually strewn throughout the land as they are not in compliance with any sort of sensible city infrastructural ordinances. He may have attempted to replace them with stainless steel, which he believed to be a better investment long-term despite it being more expensive up-front. It is also said that Mario went to the castle in World 8-8 where he found not only skeletons and fire pits but also hard water. Alas, the text does not say.

When Mario is asked what he is thinking, he often replies “Let’s A-Go!” If that reply is sincere, then it is truly absurd. Why does he long for the next level when he should reject it?

Yet, there are moments of lucidity as Mario screams “MAMMA MIA!” Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every castle the hope of actually rescuing the Princess upheld him? What would he do then? “Hang out” with Luigi? No, Luigi is awful.

There is but one truly serious philosophical question and that is whether or not Mario should commit suicide. Should he collide with his very first obstacle, the Goomba (a clear metaphor for Mario’s inability to reconcile his Italian-American identity)? Should he shoot himself with a Bullet Bill eight times his size? Or should he simply jump down one of the many bottomless pits? Mario is weary for he knows that should he die, he still must live at least two more times.

It is during his return back to World 1-1, during that pause screen while the 11-year old playing the game runs to the bathroom, that Mario interests me. I see that mustachioed man finally able to walk left only to trudge with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. The game is never really “over” and neither is his despair.

Yet, the reverse is also true. There is no angry sun in World 2-1 without shy ghosts in World 8-1. The absurd man rejoices and says “It’s A-Me Mario! WAHOO!”

Mario’s joy belongs to him. His red hat is his and his alone. Unless it’s orange because he ate a fire-flower. Or he’s wearing a Tanooki suit or Frog suit or another power-up that disposes of his hat. Or he’s thrown his hat at an enemy.

I leave Mario at the start screen. One always finds one’s mushroom again. This universe henceforth without a Player 1 seems to him neither so futile nor so frustrating that one needs to throw one’s controller at one’s mother’s TV set. Each atom of that first question block, each shell on a Koopa Troopa, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart for each of his three lives. One must imagine Mario super.

[greenlantern94to04]

Guy Gardner: Warrior #20 (May 1994)

"EMERALD FALLOUT," Part 3! The "Emerald Twilight" tie-in storyline kicks into high gear as Guy is joined by the Justice League, some former Green Lanterns, a (not so) secret villain, and, at last, new writer Beau Smith! Nothing against Chuck Dixon as a writer, but it's under Smith that Guy Gardner truly became a Warrior.

At the end of GG:W #19, Alan Scott met Guy at the JL's HQ to ask for his help with figuring out what the hell's going on with the Green Lanterns these days. Alan mentions the green dome that covered what remains of Coast City (GL #48), and Guy answers: "Whaddya mean 'remains'?" Yes, Guy is just learning that a major American city where he lived for several years has been totally destroyed...

...but, to be fair, he'd been replaced by an evil alien clone when that happened (this means that the Guy who got some good zingers at Aquaman's expense during Coast City's memorial in Superman #81 was actually the clone).

While Alan and Guy are talking, Colos of the Darkstars ("that second-rate, low-rent Green Lantern wanna-be's" as Guy puts it) also stops by to let everyone know that several GLs, including good ol' Hal Jordan, are missing. Others have been found -- dead. Guy insists, in not very polite terms, that he should be the one to lead a group to planet Oa to find out what's happening, but then Wonder Woman intervenes and... agrees with him?!

So, it's decided that Guy will lead a possibly suicide mission to Oa because he's the only one in the League who knows his way around the place. Martian Manhunter, Captain Atom, and The Ray are also coming along. Ex-Green Lantern (and Hal's ex) Arisia is also at the JL HQ, for some reason, and wants to join Guy's Suicide Squad, but Guy won't let her because she's got no powers and he already feels like he's babysitting The Ray. Right before they're about to leave for space, though, Arisia returns with a giant Cable-style gun, ankle pistols, and, perhaps most importantly from Guy's perspective, a far more revealing outfit. He lets her come, obviously.

(And pouches, but I didn't really need to tell you about the pouches.)

As the group approaches Oa, they run across a ton of GL corpses floating in space. It's only once Guy is actually down on the planet and sees the destruction first hand that he realizes his vision of Hal trashing the place while fighting Sinestro (GG:W #18) must have been real. This leads to the heartbreaking moment from the cover when Guy finds Kilowog's skull on the ground, where Hal left it after killing him (GL #50), and cries for the big poozer. Martian Manhunter and Arisia are also pretty shaken up, but they don't have a lot of time to mourn before everyone is attacked by green monsters.

After several pages of all these heavy hitters (and Arisia) being completely owned by green goop, we find out who's behind all this: HAL JORDAN!

Which we already knew, because we've been reading Green Lantern, but it's still a cool "reveal." TO BE CONCLUDED!

Plotline-Watch:

Ice also wants to come on the mission to Oa, but Guy turns her down far more gently than he did with Arisia, telling her she can't come because he simply can't face the possibility of something bad happening to her (plus he wants her to take care of his crippled supervillain brother). As he leaves, she says "Good-bye, Guy" and drops an icy tear on the floor. I like this scene because it doesn't hide the fact that Guy is a giant sexist, but his genuine concern for Tora still makes him sympathetic. The "good-bye" is particularly poignant in light of near future events...

Before reaching Oa, the group runs into another former Green Lantern: Probert the Bad One, the barbarian GL that Beau Smith introduced in GLCQ #8. Probert is honoring the last wishes of dead GL Graf Toren by "igniting his path to his ancestors" (setting his corpse on fire, I guess?) and is glad to see Guy there, since Graf had spoken highly of him. Smith has said that he had plans for Probert to become a sort of mentor to Guy, but sadly that never happened; he'll only make a couple of appearances after this.

Looks like Probert didn't bother checking Graf's pulse before performing final rites on his body, since Geoff Johns would reveal much later that he was captured alive by the Manhunters after this. Actually, I don't think Johns read this issue: at least one of the GL corpses we see floating around (Chaselon, the orb guy) would be shown to be alive during Johns' run without explanation.

Ironic that Guy criticized General Glory for not paying attention to the news in GG #16 (since Glory hadn't heard about the whole "evil clone" thing) when he himself doesn't watch them at all, it seems. Based on what's been going on in the Superman titles, it's been a few weeks since Coast City blew up. Hard to believe something like that would be out of the news cycle in that time, unless there was some sort of presidential sex scandal and/or celebrity murder case going on.

The Wonder Woman interaction is interesting because another thing Smith has said in interviews is that he wanted her and Guy to become an item, but not really, but yes really. His idea was that, for whatever reason, Guy and Wondy would have to pretend to be romantically involved as part of some mission, with the obvious hilarity resulting from DC's foremost macho knucklehead "dating" a feminist icon. But then, at some point, it'd be hinted that they'd actually started developing feelings for each other. Maybe it's for the best that this story never happened, because the resulting WW/GG fanfics might have destroyed the nascent internet.

I like this moment with Guy telling everyone they better be confident in their "manhood, womanhood or whateverhood" if they're gonna go on the mission, after overhearing The Ray trying to give him some sass. Guy Gardner says trans right???

NEXT: Gardner vs. Jordan!

[lost-technology]

Dear My Brain, I do NOT need to do another massive Trigun AU right now. However, just to make you happy, I'll toss out my ideas here for "maybe someday." Okay, I'm on a Fallout-kick lately. Good show for my games, yes? A rare pretty decent live action adaptation of a set of video games. Definitely nods to fans / players there. Also been doing a little playing of Fallout 4. (Fallout 3 is the only game of the series I've played all the way through main quest sadly (maybe I'll download the classics from Steam...) Anyway, I've played with this notion for Trigun before - but only in the "if they were players." I made perks / gameplay styles for the main characters. So, what are you doing, brain? Why are you starting to come up with ideas for an actual story for me to write as a crossover?!!! Especially when I do not know if there are enough people who like both properties AND read fanfiction to be interested in a crossover AU / fusion fic - then again, I tend to write things primarily for my own delight, anyway. I was telling myself "no, these two things are already too similar, there's really no need," but then came the idea that "no, there are some things unique enough to the Fallout setting that you could really have fun with the Trigun characters wandering a post nuclear North America rather than Planet Gunsmoke / No Man's Land." I could even interchangeably refer to the Wasteland as No Man's Land... Okay, Brain, so you're telling me that in this fusion universe, Vault-Tec had a subsidiary that worked closely with the budding U.S. space program, which if I am not mistaken, is canon (that satellite-dish quest in Fallout 3 and that experimental for space-colonisation front Vault concealing the real experiment in the Nuka-World expansion for 4). SEEDS was sort of its own separate thing, more benevolent than the Vaults and free from their wild secret experiments. Their mission was open: Developing a new, yet profitable, source of power for the cooperate overlords to profit from, being a failsafe for re-terraforming the Earth in the event of a nuclear war, and being a study for close-quarter scientist-living for potential space colonies. SEEDS Vault 05 (as distinct from Vault 5, SEEDS gets a different class) saw the successful bioengineering of life forms they called Plants. They were actually developed shortly before the war of 2077, but were not considered perfected. After the bombs dropped and the doors sealed, further study showed the Plants' potential as essentially living G.E.C.Ks (Garden of Eden Creation Kits). A living answer to the G.E.C.K, water-chips, cold-fusion... Even a potential way to divest from the atomic energy that America had been depending on since the end of WWII. (Fallout, for non-players, is an AU of reality diverging at WWII's end). And then Independents are born. Rem Saverem, a rogue scientist who rebels against Vault-Tec's lack of ethics managed to smuggle out the first Independent. Poor Tesla, being a little girl she had to send out, but the Hell of the Wastes were literally a better shot for her survival than for her to stay in the SEEDS-Vault. Sometime later, a pair of twin boys are born and Rem manages to convince the crew not to make them into test subjects. Until she can't. Cue big escape scene where she gets Vash and Nai out of the vault and dies in a hail of bullets right before them as guards cut her down and come after them... And so starts the journey of pair of living McGuffins who can either save the world or destroy it in search of their lost sister. Nai eventually becomes Millions Knives, a brutal Wasteland warlord bent on the destruction of humankind. Vash is on the run with bounties upon bounties upon him. He meets a ghoul named Wolfwood, dependant upon a certain kind of Chem to heal his wounds and to keep him from going feral and a couple of reporter-ladies from one of the larger settlement-cities intent upon uncovering Wasteland mysteries.

[justafoxhound]

Snippet Someday

Tagged by @dirty-bosmer , thanks what a fun game! Makes me want to edit the early bits a lot lol, but was fun to dip back into the later parts!

Rules: Revisit an old fic (or earlier chapters of your current WIP) and share a snip from:

Your first chapter

Your favourite chapter

Your most challenging chapter

Alternatively, if you don't write longfic, feel free to share your one-shots. Provide as much or as little commentary as you want.

From Atomic Smitten (a Fallout 3 fanfic)

First chapter- 1. A Very Bad Wakeup Call

Radiation leak. Cave in. Reactor meltdown. Old age. Boredom. These were the ways Talia expected she would die in Vault 101, the underground nuclear shelter she called home. She’d never have guessed it would be Johnny from Vault Security in the cafeteria with the police baton.

Favourite chapter- 33. Obsidian: On Reflection, He Should Have Charged More

At the bottom of the stairwell he found her already clambering over a dead mutant, reloading her shotgun. She looked up at him, a hollow smile juxtaposing the deep set pits of obsidian in her pupils. Vaulties always were either the weakest or wildest migrants to the wasteland. “This thing is fucking awesome. You got one?” Clarence pulled back the hammer on his revolver. “Forty-four is all the stopping power I’ve ever needed, Miss. Now, I insist we hurry. We’ll cook down here regardless of the chef if we dither.”

Challenging chapter- 23. Private Investigations

The rain began to come down as Burke reached Wilhelm’s Wharf on the northern edge of the city. The universe sometimes had a grand sense of timing. Truthfully he disliked the city. Or at least the ruins of it. Rivet City itself was enjoyable enough. Crowded with the hungry and desperate, run by the honourable and corrupt alike, each as predictable as the other, with a healthy smattering of unscrupulous individuals throughout. It was rife with opportunity for making a quick buck, though he’d always been interested in a longer affair; the security was too tight to really work the system from the outside, so one would need to wield some amount of control. The city council was the key to that.

Anyone with works they want to share feel free to jump on this!

[feministdragon]

“Every place in the world has sun, wind, waves, flowing water, and warmth or coolness below ground, in some combination. Renewable energy sources are a step up, not a step down; instead of scarce, expensive, and polluting, they have the potential to be abundant, cheap, and globally distributed. Transitioning all of our infrastructural systems to be powered by renewable sources is about growing out the number of people who have access to more energy, who benefit from using it to meet human needs, whether as basic as cooking food or as modern as global telecommunications.  Leaning hard into renewable energy opens up two further possibilities. When we talk about responding to climate change, what we really mean is minimizing the suffering that results from climate instability. Limiting emissions is part of that, of course—every increment in temperature has a measurable human impact, which means that every decrement in emissions makes a difference—but so is mitigating the effects of the atmospheric changes that are already locked in. Technology is our active human interface with the material world, and all of the ways in which we respond to climate change will require access to energy, whether it's robust disaster response, microgrids that provide reliable electricity even during extreme weather events, or building out cities and communities that are resilient to a wider range of environmental conditions.  And that brings us to the final reason to transition to renewable energy, which is because we also use matter. It takes energy to make things, but of course it also requires atoms, usually specific atoms, in quite specific combinations, sourced from specific places. They are extracted, refined, processed, fabricated, transported to where they are used, and discarded. Much of our consumption of matter is in a one-way path from extraction to waste. Those atoms not only have to come from somewhere but they have to go somewhere: they often end up in the atmosphere as pollution, in the ground as landfill, and in ecosystems planetwide. 

We mostly only close materials loops when it’s ‘economically viable’ to do so. By and large, what that means is that it takes less energy to recycle the material than it does to create it in the first place, which is true for aluminum, steel, and glass, but not for materials like plastics or concrete. But the promise of access to renewable energy is that it changes this equation, putting processes that are intrinsically energy-intensive, like recovering the carbon from plastics for reuse or desalinating seawater to make it potable, on the table. It doesn't matter how much energy a process needs if it is inexpensive, doesn’t limit the energy available to others for their use, and is non-polluting. There's a virtuous circle here too: the faster that renewable energy systems are up and running, and the closer we can get to achieving this potential, the more that we can apply that clean energy to repurposing the materials of our current technological systems to build out the physical infrastructures of our new ones. Not beating swords into plowshares, but recycling cars into electric trams. We live on a sun-drenched blue marble hanging in space, and for all that we persist in believing it's the other way around, that means we have access to finite resources of matter but unlimited energy. We can learn to act accordingly.”

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up October 9, 2022

Under the cut:

A Russian missile attack early on Sunday struck an apartment block and other residential buildings in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 13 people and injuring 87 others, including 10 children, Ukrainian officials said.

Engineers restored external power to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on Oct. 9, a day after the facility lost connection to its last remaining operating power line due to shelling, forcing the plant to switch on its emergency generators, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement

Ukrainian authorities have exhumed the first 20 bodies – including children, civilians and soldiers – from makeshift graves in Lyman, Donetsk Oblast.

Car traffic on the Crimean bridge has resumed in two lanes, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Marat Khusnullin said in a Telegram post Sunday. Train traffic has also resumed on the bridge, but larger vehicles like heavy trucks, vans and buses continue to use ferry boats.

Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukrainian special services for blowing up the Crimean bridge.

“A Russian missile attack early on Sunday struck an apartment block and other residential buildings in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 13 people and injuring 87 others, including 10 children, Ukrainian officials said.

The pre-dawn fusillade was the second of its kind against the city in three days. It came a day after a blast hit Russia’s road-and-rail bridge to Crimea, the key supply line for Russian forces battling to hold territory around the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.

Russian aircraft launched at least 12 missiles into Zaporizhzhia in the latest strike, partially destroying a nine-storey apartment block, leveling five other residential buildings and damaging many more, said Oleksandr Starukh, governor of the Zaporizhzhia region.

"Twelve missiles came, all from planes," he said on state-run television.

At least 13 people died and 87 others were wounded, 60 of whom were hospitalized, regional officials said. The wounded included 10 children.

The rescue operation at the nine-storey apartment building was complicated by a fire that broke out in the rubble, Starukh said.

"We pulled people out quickly and saved eight people already, but when the fire starts then people (under the rubble) have practically no chance of surviving as there is no oxygen," he added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the attack as "absolute evil" by people he called "savages and terrorists", vowing those responsible would be brought to justice.

Zaporizhzhia city, about 52 km (30 miles) from a Russian-held nuclear power plant, has been under frequent shelling in recent weeks, with 19 people killed on Thursday.

“Zaporizhzhia again. Merciless strikes on peaceful people again. On residential buildings, just in the middle of the night," Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messaging app.

Emergency workers and firefighters cordoned off the nine-storey building and dug for survivors and casualties in the smouldering rubble of a massive central section that had collapsed.

The blast wrecked cars and left torn metal window frames, balconies and air conditioners dangling from the building’s shrapnel-pitted facade.

Rescue workers carried the bodies of residents who died out through a window and laid them out on the ground under blankets and in body bags.

Most of the Zaporizhzhia region, including the nuclear plant, have been under Russian control since the early days of Russia's invasion. The capital of the region, Zaporizhzhia city, remains under Ukrainian control.

Ukraine, the United States, the European Union, and human rights organizations have accused Russia of committing war crimes since its full-scale invasion began in February, saying attacks on civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, have killed and wounded thousands of people.

Moscow denies deliberately attacking civilians during what it calls a “special military operation” to demilitarize its neighbour.”-via Reuters

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“Engineers restored external power to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on Oct. 9, a day after the facility lost connection to its last remaining operating power line due to shelling, forcing the plant to switch on its emergency generators, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement.  

"After the repair work was successfully completed, the 750-kilovolt line was reconnected to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in the evening, enabling it to start switching off the emergency diesel generators that had provided it with backup electricity since the connection was cut early on Saturday," Grossi said.

Ukraine’s state nuclear operator Energoatom reported on Oct. 8 that overnight shelling had cut power to the nuclear plant, which requires cooling to avoid a meltdown, forcing it to resort to its emergency generators.

After the power was cut, Energoatom head Petro Kotin told the BBC that the diesel generators have a limited supply of fuel. “If (the generators) run out of fuel, after that they will stop, and after that, there will be a disaster… there will be a melting of the active core and a release of radioactivity from there,” Kotin said.

The nuclear power plant's six reactors are currently in a "cold shutdown" but still require power for cooling and other essential nuclear safety and security operations.

Russia has occupied the plant since early March and has been using it as a base to launch attacks on Ukraine.”-via Kyiv Independent

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“Ukrainian authorities have exhumed the first 20 bodies – including children, civilians and soldiers – from makeshift graves in Lyman, Donetsk Oblast.

The identification procedure is complex, as "most of the bodies are in a state of change; there is a package that contains only bones," Ukraine's National Police reported on Oct. 9.

The police say the exhumation works continue at two mass burial sites, where there may be about 200 civilian bodies.

Since Sept. 29, Ukrainian authorities have found 87 bodies in Donetsk Oblast.”-via Kyiv Independent

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“Car traffic on the Crimean bridge has resumed in two lanes, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Marat Khusnullin said in a Telegram post Sunday.

“Traffic has already been launched along two lanes on the Crimean bridge,” Khusnullin wrote, adding that earlier, one lane was being used for cars traveling in both directions, slowing down traffic since the explosion.

The deputy prime minister also posted a video showing the cars moving in two lanes across the Kerch bridge.

“Lighting was adjusted on the road part, new markings were applied, barrier fences were restored,” Khusnullin added. “Now it will be possible to drive faster on the bridge by car.”

Train traffic has also resumed on the bridge, but larger vehicles like heavy trucks, vans and buses continue to use ferry boats.”-via CNN

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“Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukrainian special services for blowing up the Crimean bridge.

Source : Putin during a meeting with the head of the SC of the Russian Federation Oleksandr Bastrykin, reports RIA Novosti and TASS

Details : According to Putin, the authors, executors and customers of the bombing of the Crimean bridge are the special services of Ukraine.

The President of the Russian Federation also called the undermining of the bridge a "terrorist attack".

Putin's direct speech : "Here... there is no doubt. This is a terrorist attack aimed at destroying Russia's critically important civilian infrastructure."”-via Pravda (Ukrainian language source)