Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran
But it wouldn't be stated that way.
It would be something that might eventually lead to death like don't vaccinate your children because it might cause autism, or rely on faith healing instead of modern medicine.
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Actually, no. I presented it as a straightforward message, "Kill your children [to save the Earth]." I gave it a substantial negative modifier, of course! But, at the same time, there were several elements that supported it:
* As a Fifth Wave society, Montréal had long lifespans, comparatively low fertility, and lots of people who never had children; being a parent was inconvenient and made you a target for social pressure, and many parents had some "buyer's remorse."
* There had been a recurring campaign sponsored by Preservationist groups with the theme "Show that you care for the Earth by not having children!"
* The woman who designed the campaign "paid the price" by killing her own daughter, and then turning herself in, with a statement of why she did it.
The dice roll came up as a modest success. But even having 1-2% of the parents in Montréal decide that killing their children was a good idea struck me as not passing reality testing, besides being way too much for the city's police even to try to cope with, and more than enough to cause widespread terror. So I cut the response rate down to a fraction of 1%, by GM decree, because I simply didn't believe that the outcome of the roll was plausible, even granting an exaggerated effectiveness of memetic methods.
Bill Stoddard