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Question on the Psychonaut Corps Approximately how much will this move up our timetable for a Cydonia expedition? If I recall, our estimates for doing this conventionally was about three years, maybe a little less depending on how useful the practical experience of the Cyclops crew is in accelerating our research into Xenoarchaeology. How does this compare, factoring in all the logistics and stuff we'd actually need to build for this? I ask because as useful as it would be, do we WANT to suddenly accelerate this? Because to a degree the Cydonia Expedition as it is currently proposed acts as a bit of a carrot for fostering diplomatic relations. People will want to be on-board with us so they can get their experts a seat on the trip and possibly gain greater access to whatever goodies we find. It might shoot us in the foot slightly if we just send a bunch of Art Bell Coast to Coast AM cranks up there before anyone else gets a chance. That being said, I'm not wholly opposed to it. I mean hell, we're already contemplating letting Howard Hughes send John C Lilly and a tank full of dolphins up there, so I can't say we're not still being multinational about this. I just worry how it'll come off to others. If nothing else, we need to vete for actual full-on frauds so we don't totally burn all our reputation. What's James Randi up to in these days?
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Oct 2, 2021 18:31
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Mister Bates posted:The mole would have had to have access to high-level diplomatic and military communications and full knowledge of confidential activities of the space program, including Mars. Our prime suspect is currently Mikhail Gorbachev. 
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Oct 2, 2021 18:45
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Asterite34 posted:Question on the Psychonaut Corps Apparently, at the point of divergence he was in New York, appearing on WOR weekly. His clash with Ui Geller which gained him national fame hadn't happened yet, so he's probably pretty obscure except around the area.
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Oct 2, 2021 18:55
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Mister Bates posted:- Exactly what they would learn is unknown; possibly nothing. The primary short-term goal is to determine the veracity of, and seek to understand, unexplained phenomena related to the Mars ruins and alien activity in general. Specifically cited targets of study include alien abduction, UFO sightings, the Martian 'airship' which was sighted by early explorers and not seen since, and the strange dreams reported by scientists studying Cydonia. In order to do this, the organization will seek to develop a highly adaptable and holistic approach to study, in which all ideas, no matter how outlandish, are considered at least once. If one were given to be charitable, one might say the long-term the goal of the proposed organization is to act as a sort of 'proving ground' for new ideas, where they can be tested, subjected to scientific scrutiny, and either substantiated or falsified. If one were given to be uncharitable, one might say the long-term goal is to act as a jobs program for cranks. An excerpt from the Haitian Christian Final Liberation Front (FLFKA) delegates reply, currently away to be involved with the capture of Port-au-Prince. I would argue that confirming theres nothing to them could be as important as discovering something new. After all they are one of the first people to live on another world for an extended period of time, and alongside unknown alien technology! The entire situation is unusual! Stress, an equivalent to the overview effect or a rare tendency to "space madness", reaction to Martian chemicals, or even the effects of alien spirits are all equally likely. Something happened or is happening, and it would be the height of folly to simply brush it under the rug because it doesn't fit into neat boxes. [...] Did not the USSR and former US conduct research into similar areas? If we're afraid of hiring cranks and stage magicians surely those groups could form a core to keep the enterprise grounded. Though I expect the final group of researchers selected to be suitably culturally diverse so as to keep the 'possiblity space' as large as possible.
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Oct 2, 2021 19:36
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Mister Bates posted:Our prime suspect is currently Mikhail Gorbachev. I'm gonna need some in universe reasoning for this, AIUI he didn't realize that the West was so far ahead until a state visit to the US, which was the reason he decided communism wasn't working. I know he was a reformer, but working for something like GLADIO seems way out of left field, especially in the timeline the west has specifically lost the ideological war. Volmarias fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Oct 2, 2021 |
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Oct 2, 2021 21:08
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Is there a reason why we can't do both? Allow the X-COM experimental group to form and do their stuff in the Mars ruins, while we put in the workto create a proper Xenoarcheology department over the next few years?
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Oct 2, 2021 21:46
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Question for our intelligence guys: How long would the nuclear weapons lost during the Collapse of the US continue to function assuming: 1) No maintenance of any kind 2) Unskilled maintenance/cannibalizing identical weapons for parts 3) Using skilled labour but no large-scale manufacturing
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Oct 2, 2021 21:55
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Volmarias posted:I'm gonna need some in universe reasoning for this, AIUI he didn't realize that the West was so far ahead until a state visit to the US, which was the reason he decided communism wasn't working. I know he was a reformer, but working for something like GLADIO seems way out of left field, especially in the timeline the west has specifically lost the ideological war. If he did it, who knows why at this point; he's currently the prime suspect, not 'definitely a mole'. The 'smoking gun' that moved him up to that position is specifically a Soviet government document recovered from the US Embassy in Japan, provided to us by the Japanese, that is confidential and originated from his desk. The actual contents of the document in question were relatively inconsequential, a report from 1981 about agricultural production in radiation-contaminated areas, but that specific report was never released publicly, and it was compiled for him. He may not have leaked it to them himself, it could have been any of dozens of people of various ranks and positions, but that, combined with the extensive knowledge the enemy had of Comintern activities and Soviet defenses in particular, immediately propelled him to the top of the list. It's only been a few weeks, there hasn't really been time for an in-depth investigation, but considering how close the world came to nuclear annihilation, the committee that wrote the report considered the increased scrutiny warranted. Also, this isn't actually in the report itself, but reading between the lines a bit: the USSR is currently undergoing some major political changes and leadership shakeups, that have included a pretty big purge of high-level officials for corruption. It is possible that not all of your sources in Soviet intelligence are being 100% objective in their assessments of specific colleagues and superiors. Antilles posted:Is there a reason why we can't do both? Allow the X-COM experimental group to form and do their stuff in the Mars ruins, while we put in the workto create a proper Xenoarcheology department over the next few years? You can absolutely do both. TDS posted:Question for our intelligence guys: How long would the nuclear weapons lost during the Collapse of the US continue to function assuming: Respectively: - Depending on the environment it was stored in, anywhere from a few months to three years. - Depending on the exact type of bomb you're using, anywhere from 5 to 15 years. - For low-yield uranium or plutonium fission bombs, indefinitely. For more modern thermonuclear weapons, 5-12 years unless you have access to a source of tritium (e.g. a nuclear reactor). With access to tritium, indefinitely. In both cases, having to hand-fabricate parts on a small scale severely limits the ability to scale; any arsenal maintained this way would necessarily be small in quantity.
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Oct 2, 2021 23:49
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The administrator of the Mars colony expresses his great distress at the idea of having to babysit a bunch of cranks and freaks. Space is hostile enough when all your cosmonauts are sober. (ooc i think it's a hilarious idea and we should go for it.)
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Oct 3, 2021 06:59
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It's not just the maintenance, you need highly skilled people to build a brand new detonator system for each bomb - the old one will refuse to work because you're not using it 'right'.
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Oct 3, 2021 07:13
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The Lone Badger posted:It's not just the maintenance, you need highly skilled people to build a brand new detonator system for each bomb - the old one will refuse to work because you're not using it 'right'. So we know they have a strong body of technical knowledge available: maybe not a massive one, but one with at least some skilled nuclear engineers and scientists in it, just from being able to maintain the nuclear weapons they were going to use and retrofit them. poo poo, Gladio's really way more on the ball than I'd have thought. And all this just to use europe as a sacrificial pawn, disgusting.
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Oct 3, 2021 09:29
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It seems odd that anyone could look at this and continue to believe that Capitalism represents a future for anything other than the earth as a burned out husk. Those of us in the Republic of Great Britain are eager to have Thatchers body returned to us, such that she can be interned into the communal toilet that we have built atop the graves of all those who oppressed us. Alongside that, do we think it'd be possible to have our intelligence assets investigate (alongside member nations of Comintern) without turning things into a comical over-reaction? We do not want to leave our world a burned out husk either and prison sentences may be better than firing squad for many of those caught.
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Oct 3, 2021 11:16
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Had the moon attack happened were there enough gladio agent to take over the ruins of the city? Was the secret gladio moon base self sufficient?
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Oct 3, 2021 12:20
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Mister Bates posted:sending Fox Mulder and a bunch of dolphins to go do LSD on Mars and trip balls at alien ruins in the hopes of understanding them better God, I've never wanted anything more.
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Oct 3, 2021 16:37
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Pirate Radar posted:God, I've never wanted anything more. Seriously, I'm not sure if this is actually supposed to be a negative or what
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Oct 3, 2021 17:44
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A negative for the professionalization of our space efforts, a boon to the quality of future lp updates
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Oct 3, 2021 18:12
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If this were a TV show, I feel like after the big international summit/Revenge situation that was the culmination of a lot of long-running plotlines, followed immediately with the season finale big dramatic tragedy of the spacedock bombing, that the psychonaut corps is essentailly a comic relief beach episode
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Oct 3, 2021 18:20
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NewMars posted:So we know they have a strong body of technical knowledge available: maybe not a massive one, but one with at least some skilled nuclear engineers and scientists in it, just from being able to maintain the nuclear weapons they were going to use and retrofit them. Building a functioning nuclear weapon, at least according to my friend the nuclear engineer (who has sworn a blood oath never to work on nuclear weapons), is actually shockingly easy. The knowledge is definitely out there and not necessarily that hard to find, because the difficult part is DOING anything with it. It's more a question of having the precision machinery to build a device to the tolerances required, and also the active reactor to keep it supplied with fissionable material. But as we saw from the Boy Scout who was trying to build a breeder reactor in a backyard shed, if you're dedicated enough, you CAN find ways to do these things. And having a weapon already built that you just need to maintain makes that easier. Asterite34 posted:If this were a TV show, I feel like after the big international summit/Revenge situation that was the culmination of a lot of long-running plotlines, followed immediately with the season finale big dramatic tragedy of the spacedock bombing, that the psychonaut corps is essentailly a comic relief beach episode Absolutely, though as with most things about that show, even the comedy relief episode winds up being majorly important to the plot.
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Oct 3, 2021 18:38
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Question: Were the GLADIO conventional attacks contained only to comintern polities, or were there attacks in non-aligned nations as well?
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Oct 3, 2021 23:24
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As an IRL archaeologist, having untrained people poke around and do archaeology things is 100% going to lead to a bunch of poo poo being destroyed and a bunch of data being lost. So keep that in mind.
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Oct 4, 2021 00:39
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Telsa Cola posted:As an IRL archaeologist, having untrained people poke around and do archaeology things is 100% going to lead to a bunch of poo poo being destroyed and a bunch of data being lost. So keep that in mind. As an IRL archeologist wouldn't you also say that it'd be p cool to have real life Indiana Jones meets X Files meets Men who stare at goats team do cool poo poo? Jokes aside The benefits far outstrip the negatives IMHO. Xenoarcheology now compared to xenoarcheology in two years. Poor Intel on potential threats now or a surprise visit from a hostile race later. Small kickstarts now that will boost our research or larger ones later when we might have already spent time on those technologies. Deadly traps and ancient defense systems now or avoiding the pitfalls in a few years? Affi fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Oct 4, 2021 |
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Oct 4, 2021 10:12
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Incompetents wiping all the data vs us getting a leg up on Xeno weponary, drives etc. Like, I appreciate his fervor but at the same time, the losses are likely to be more than two years worth of work
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Oct 4, 2021 10:18
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Veloxyll posted:Incompetents wiping all the data vs us getting a leg up on Xeno weponary, drives etc. At the same time, if some of that stuff is only visible through psychonatucial techniques, we may very well inadvertently destroy them by pursuing a purely conventional investigation.
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Oct 4, 2021 10:31
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Obvious answer would be to give them access to smaller sites/caches of tech, along with a series of real Archoelogists/Computing specialists as minders, as some trial runs. Let them figure out safe and non-destructive ways of extracting info and carrying out their research. Then once they've proven they're not complete liabilities we let them tackle what we think are the biggest and most important sites on mars. Also might be a good idea to make sure they have a security detachment outside their chain of command who can keep an eye on the psychadelics storeroom and put a couple of rounds into the back of the head of anyone who starts drawing pentagrams chanting in strange daemonic languages.
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Oct 4, 2021 10:56
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Telsa Cola posted:As an IRL archaeologist, having untrained people poke around and do archaeology things is 100% going to lead to a bunch of poo poo being destroyed and a bunch of data being lost. So keep that in mind. Oh, is it a good idea? Of course not. But the thought of Fox Mulder and a skeptical talking dolphin poking and prodding the mysteries of the cosmos has an undeniable je ne sais *dolphin noise*
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Oct 4, 2021 11:08
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Just lmao at the idea of sending amateurs over to dig stuff up without any real oversight. If we create XCOM we basically create a space CIA with little to no oversight, access to potentially awful technology and with goals we don't know about. Restrict access, convene an official archeological body under a military authority and secure the digsite for the good of the Comitern and humanity as a whole.
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Oct 4, 2021 11:11
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Telsa Cola posted:As an IRL archaeologist, having untrained people poke around and do archaeology things is 100% going to lead to a bunch of poo poo being destroyed and a bunch of data being lost. So keep that in mind. True. I'm okay enough with letting the psychonauts tag along on things and drop acid near poo poo or whatever but I suggest we have a few of xcom's more 'mundane' experts supervising them to help avoid issues like the above.
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Oct 4, 2021 11:12
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Kitfox88 posted:True. I'm okay enough with letting the psychonauts tag along on things and drop acid near poo poo or whatever but I suggest we have a few of xcom's more 'mundane' experts supervising them to help avoid issues like the above. And thus the Adeptus Mechanicus was born.
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Oct 4, 2021 11:47
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That's why I'm all for a best-of-both-worlds approach. Create the X-COM psychonauts divison now, let them poke about a little bit (limited access and heavy supervision) while we train a proper xenoarcheology team to to a conventional survey of the ruins. There's a decent chance we'll get something actionable now, we'll minimize the risk they'll gently caress something up, and we'll still get the conventional results in 2-3 years.
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Oct 4, 2021 12:13
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I appreciate the risk of contaminating a valuable archaeological site, but at least in regards to the Face (the only part of the ruins complex we've really examined), the cat's kinda out of the bag, what with a hundred untrained WWI-era sailors living there for a year, eating the decorative plants and breaking the plumbing for drinking water. How much more harm can a bunch of closely supervised New Age kooks do?
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Oct 4, 2021 13:12
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Yeah the sailors have done a pretty good job of contaminating the site already, and while it's always possible to make it worse, if the capitalists are getting spooky psychic mind links with frozen aliens we need to get in on that game too before they find something important. We cannot allow a psychic alien mind link gap.
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Oct 4, 2021 14:21
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Antilles posted:That's why I'm all for a best-of-both-worlds approach. Create the X-COM psychonauts divison now, let them poke about a little bit (limited access and heavy supervision) while we train a proper xenoarcheology team to to a conventional survey of the ruins. yeah, this
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Oct 4, 2021 14:23
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We live in an age of space magic. Let's go hog wild and turn the psychonauts loose on everything. Give them all the drugs and space rocks they want.
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Oct 4, 2021 15:40
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Also IRL (ex-)archaeologist here - there's absolutely nothing stopping us from sending actual archaeologists along with the cranks immediately AND developing xenoarchaeology at the same time. The actual techniques and tools that will form the subdiscipline of xenoarchaeology can be built down on Earth, sure, but there is no substitute for fieldwork in building that theoretical structure. Plus last I heard we have an absurd amount of kit that can survey and catalogue non-destructively from space. Even Earth-focused archaeologists of this era could do incredible things with those - they're like OTL LIDAR and ground imaging techniques on cocaine. As such - start the cranks off on Earth, using all these tools to detect and investigate any alien presence here under the tutelage of actual archaeologists, before letting them on Mars proper. So long as they can operate an earth resistance meter properly they can still drop as much acid as they want, imo E: you can also train them on the various pre-settlement sites on the Moon, dovetailing it with cultural heritage management (the 'that belongs in a museum!' branch of historical studies) Obliterati fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Oct 4, 2021 |
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Oct 4, 2021 15:52
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Doing 5 tabs of acid at the Apollo 11 site to talk to the ghost of Buzz Aldrin. The fact that he's not dead yet doesn't matter.
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Oct 4, 2021 16:06
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Okay, maybe we can start small and go from there. Like maybe we try some astral projection or remote viewing of the Mars site from an Earth facility, it's entirely possible psychic phenomena can work over interplanetary distances. If they need closer proximity, like some tactile psychometry of a physical object, we have the Roswell craft for them to play around with, we've extracted about as much as we can from that wreck. Maybe do a séance on the Martian corpses we have on ice somewhere.
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Oct 4, 2021 16:11
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Seriously, you let one crank scientist trying to make human popsicles gain legitimacy and the rest of the yippies and freakshows come out of the woodwork... (do it, it's hilarious)
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Oct 4, 2021 16:36
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Crazycryodude posted:Doing 5 tabs of acid at the Apollo 11 site to talk to the ghost of Buzz Aldrin. He will be, one day, so his ghost exists in potentia. We just need to draw it out.
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Oct 4, 2021 17:37
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Asterite34 posted:Okay, maybe we can start small and go from there. Like maybe we try some astral projection or remote viewing of the Mars site from an Earth facility, it's entirely possible psychic phenomena can work over interplanetary distances. This actually strikes me as a great idea.
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Oct 4, 2021 19:03
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Freudian posted:He will be, one day, so his ghost exists in potentia. We just need to draw it out. We finally find an answer to the question that has long plagued philosophy, that being the solution to the two dudes on the moon quandary.
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Oct 4, 2021 19:40
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