New Reality Seeds

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

A natural tipping point was reached, and LSD entered the water cycle. By the late 1950's the first "acid rains" were falling, driving all animal life in the vicinity into hallucinogenic fits. Water supplies all over the world were showing more and more contamination, and soon outbreaks of what was named Spontaneous Hallucinatory Onset Syndrome were occuring worldwide.

This is a great set up for a surreal version of "On the Beach"

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Is the idea of dumping enough LSD into the water cycle to cause psychoactive dosing planet-wide... plausible?

No. It works fine for IW, where departutres from plausible happen all over the place, but like many alter the planet scenarios it suffers from a problem of scale. Effective dosage of LSD is on the order of 10s of micrograms. Contaminating just the surface fresh water (never mind oceans or aquifers), about 10^17 liters, to a high enough level to deliver that, well assuming you absorb a full liter from rain or whatever, which is pretty ridiculous, you'd only need about a megaton of LSD. For more plausible doses, or more transfer into oceans (which are after all where most rain falls) it's much more. On the other hand you don't necessarily need to actually contaminate *everything* to cause disaster. So probably still not gigatons.

We are of course neglecting "minor" details like whether LSD even has enough vapor pressure to evaporate to get into rain (it doesn't), or how quickly it breaks down in the environment (likely pretty fast given that it absorbs UV quite strongly and fluoresces).

[Anders]

However, if you find a bacterium that produces LSD and releases that into the wild you get a different dynamic because bacteria reproduce.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by malloyd

We are of course neglecting "minor" details like whether LSD even has enough vapor pressure to evaporate to get into rain (it doesn't), or how quickly it breaks down in the environment (likely pretty fast given that it absorbs UV quite strongly and fluoresces).

Okay, I did not know that. Chemistry has never been my strong suit.

Then it's likely a substance with similar properties developed for military purposes. That sounds plausible.

[PTTG]

It's not a big deal (unless your players are pedantic chemists). If they are, I say go with the bio-warfare approach and have it be a bacterium or something that produces LSD, or an LSD-like-substance that acts as a defense against other bacteria.

Either way, after a couple decades something else would presumably evolve to tolerate its defenses and the LSD germ would be out-competed.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by PTTG

It's not a big deal (unless your players are pedantic chemists). If they are, I say go with the bio-warfare approach and have it be a bacterium or something that produces LSD, or an LSD-like-substance that acts as a defense against other bacteria.

Frankly I'd go with the super-LSD that has different chemical properties instead. The problem with the bacteria is that it makes the chemistry more plausible at the expense of making the reason for using it ridiculous.

"Douse the protesters/enemy troops with a hallucinogen that will soon disable them" kind of makes sense.

"Dump an hallucinogen generating bacteria into the water supply that will eventually contaminate it enough to disable any protesters, and the loyalists in town, and anybody else in the vicinity at some indefinite time in the future. Oh and we don't have a plan to remove it, so it'll affect the troops we send in eventually, and the future loyal town will need an new water supply. Nah we don't have a way to keep it from spreading elsewhere either" is self evidently a completely idiotic plan.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Frankly I'd go with the super-LSD that has different chemical properties instead. The problem with the bacteria is that it makes the chemistry more plausible at the expense of making the reason for using it ridiculous.

"Douse the protesters/enemy troops with a hallucinogen that will soon disable them" kind of makes sense.

"Dump an hallucinogen generating bacteria into the water supply that will eventually contaminate it enough to disable any protesters, and the loyalists in town, and anybody else in the vicinity at some indefinite time in the future. Oh and we don't have a plan to remove it, so it'll affect the troops we send in eventually, and the future loyal town will need an new water supply. Nah we don't have a way to keep it from spreading elsewhere either" is self evidently a completely idiotic plan.

Sadly, the world has no shortage of complete idiots. Luckily, when in power they tend to have smarter subordinates who can keep them from making too big of a mess... usually. It's not impossible that something like this could actually happen due to a 'perfect storm' of idiocy, sycophancy, and bad luck. Very, very improbable, but not impossible.

(Let's not give examples of idiots in power in real life, please. It'll just lead to arguments and derailing.)

[dcarson]

The bacteria was producing the LSD to use in a chemical plant.*But the production facility got overrun by hallucinating rioters and the bacteria got into the wild.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Paul von Hindenburgh, mainly because he was teamed up with Max Hoffmann, won a major victory at the Battle of Tannenberg (the general bias of most historians to see the Western Front as the central fact of WWI completely obscures the importance of Tannenberg).

In this Q6 world Max Hoffmann died in 1913 from a septic wound from a dog bite, and von Hindenburg was teamed up with a fool. Thus Tannenberg was a major Russian victory.

It's now October 1914 and Russia's armies are only 30 miles from Berlin, France has crossed the Rhine, and Germany is facing total ruin.

Normally this sort of thing is only of marginal interest to either Centrum or Homeline, however, the Cabal has brought news that Midwinter Aton is getting the Kaiser to hand over dangerous relics in order to save Germany and his crown. Both Homeline and Centrum have noticed the manna levels have gone up dramatically planetwide in this parallel. A new threat might get all three pwers to pull together.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Paul von Hindenburgh, mainly because he was teamed up with Max Hoffmann, won a major victory at the Battle of Tannenberg (the general bias of most historians to see the Western Front as the central fact of WWI completely obscures the importance of Tannenberg).

In this Q6 world Max Hoffmann died in 1913 from a septic wound from a dog bite, and von Hindenburg was teamed up with a fool. Thus Tannenberg was a major Russian victory.

It's now October 1914 and Russia's armies are only 30 miles from Berlin, France has crossed the Rhine, and Germany is facing total ruin.

A quick Russian victory in WWI? that's an interesting change point, with a lot of knock-on effects. Not the least of which is "everything we know about war is wrong" moments don't get hammered home. It also completely derails the Communism part of the 20th century, strengthens the idea that big multi-ethnic empires are powerful rather than internally weak, and establishes a firmly absolutist power as a major player on the world stage.

The old empires probably don't fall. Germany will loose territory and prestige, but it won't be any where near crippling as Versailles. Tanks will be a new weapon for the next war, and untested but not nearly as rushed.

This timeline seems like a great way to continue the colonial feel of pre-wwi. The great game of Asia continues, and France and Britain come out of the war looking stronger than ever.

Normally this sort of thing is only of marginal interest to either Centrum or Homeline, however, the Cabal has brought news that Midwinter Aton is getting the Kaiser to hand over dangerous relics in order to save Germany and his crown. Both Homeline and Centrum have noticed the manna levels have gone up dramatically planetwide in this parallel. A new threat might get all three pwers to pull together.

Not needed. A quick world war I from the russian side makes for some huge changes without any out-time weirdness. Homeline nations will have strong opinion on what ought to happen here, and centrum will see a timeline headed towards their final war completely unprepared for just how much carnage there will be.