Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Basically the PCs are trying to get nations to open up and let refugees in. There are educated Egyptians who've already gotten away. But the poor, rural and urban, the reactionary clergy, the army, and the vast crony and corruption networks are far harder sells.

Also, the PCs are trying to get nearby countries to allow refugee camps. Temporary refugee camps, which is a very hard sell. Temporary refugees tend to be permanent residents in the Middle East.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

This strain revves up mumps and was genetically engineered to sterilize both sexes.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I sort of have the impression that mumps sterilises by physical trauma (swelling) to the testes so it's not so much that mumps is a sterilisation disease as it's an inflammation disease. I could be wrong though.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

That is the effect of natural mumps, yes. It can inflame ovaries, too, but this does not sterilise women.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The term "natural mumps" is well chosen. The "Supermumps" was a viciously designed bio weapon mumps meant to wound and traumatize for decades. Designing the thing was a war crime. Sterilizing both sexes was meant to destroy families quickly and erase populations slowly.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

In which case, the world needs a large-scale programme of egg donation as well as sperm donation. The pressure to improve the technologies of egg donation and IVF will be immense, but it's going to be far easier and more acceptable for the fertile parts of the world than bearing huge numbers of children and handing them over to strangers, or fighting a world war.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The dynamics of that would be interesting too. Certain cultures would be all about "ethnic purity" a getting the right look or image. The break in bloodlines would be a major issue in so many lands. Others would be totally cool with it.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Try this one...

A nanotech revolution in the 2020s. Society jumps from late TL8 to TL10 in twenty years. Dirt cheap solar cells, Supercapacitors, and high-temperature Superconductors, revolutionize energy production and transport, and carbon capture prevents global warming. However, the benefits aren't evenly distributed. Nations like Russia, the Arab lands, China, and other non-democratic and oligarchic societies find they are more behind than ever. Sure they got good stuff too, but the democracies all did better. Russia, dependent on oil is particularly bitter.

The Russians, in 2050, announce the Gray Goo Bomb. If the world system isn't adjusted to their views of justice and propriety, they'll destroy anyone who offends them.

The PCs have to learn the truth about the Gray Goo Bomb and its countermeasures or except slavery for all humanity. Meanwhile, many other competitors want the secrets too. Most to promote blackmail schemes or worse!

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

This seems suspect, a LOT of manufacturing and science happens in China these days, I would expect them to do well with it.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The central problem with this as a plot is the Gray Goo isn't relevant at all.
The Russians (or Americans or Chinese or Europeans) could have done this at any time in the prior 7 decades or so, with nuclear weapons, and didn't. Any reasons (and countermeasures) are essentially unchanged by the invention of a new kind of doomsday bomb.