Storyline - Research/XVI Census: No sense at all

[Prinegon]

Hi everyone. Perhaps it is an uncommon way to start in a forum with a big complain (well, that part is not uncommon at all ) and a hint how to improve the topic, I'm complaining about (this is the uncommon part), but since I recently accidently found this project and tried out the release version (2.2.1), I really got into this game and want to add my two cent to some things. So lets get started with the one text, that totally blow my mind: XVI Census.

What I propose to do is to create a long-term rolling census that checks all registered individuals on the entire planet for XVI infection by way of a small blood test....under the supervision of a small police or military guard. If a test turns out positive, this guard will perform the arrest and turn the infected prisoners over to the UN for containment...99.9% of the planet's population is registered with one national authority or another...They are handling all the equipment and manpower locally, with strenuous checks as to the reliability of personnel and the validity of the results.

Lets see, what these quotes say: Military forces in all countries all over the world are seizing the whole medical infrastructure, human population is forced to frequent this places once a week and do some tests under the gun of military force, being aware if this test turns out badly (and the testants do not have any way to doublecheck the testresults) this could end in getting arrested and locked up. I really believe, resistance against this military bulliing would instantaniously lead to civil war in all countries.

But even if not, the manpower needed to do this tests, even if theese tests would be as simple as checking your bloodsugar (and since this is a virus infection it is to be guessed getting the results would be somewhat more complicated), would be enormous. There has to be infection cells in every hospital, guards, medical personal doing nothing more than testing on person after another, logistics getting the test indicators in every region, a propper way to demolish used test indicators (like syringes or indicator bands). By the way these hospitals have to stay operational.

I know this fiction takes place 70 years from now, but in comparison to todays situation, even if humanity was threatened by a deadly pandemie the best to hope would be to seed a fraction of mankind mainly in the industrial nations. Since the X-Vi-H virus is not airborne, but has to be injected manually the threadpotential would be far less, so the chance mankind reacting like it would, if this was a pandemic, is not existent.

It is not believable by me, testing 99,9% of world population could be done in reasonable time at all, but this text indicates theese tests to take place once a week. This wouldn't be possible even in industrial nations. And this would be even more impossible in regions like the african deserts, the australian outback or south american jungles.

I really doubt 99,9% of world population to be registered. If you look on the actual situation you don't even have to register your place of living in USA today. There are quite some industrial nations with no or no sufficient resident registrations. Even if you look to China, that has a kind of register (the hukou system), it is not sufficient because it only contains the place of your birth but your momentary living place.

It is believable registration will be required in all major states in about 70 years. It is not believable, this register would run with a 99,9% efficency.

So this whole Ufopedia entry for XVI-Census is not satisfiing at all and should be rewritten. I want to make a proposal for a better entry within the next days (perhaps I will leave the part of the Col Falkland untouched, i really like the idea of a colonell demanding to make the impossible. But the answer the UN will give will certainly change.

My proposal will look like this:

• The UN is not willing or not able to do the requested tests.
• There will be a check on all high security targets on weekly basis. This contains main politicans, military in high ranks, medical sector (everyone allowed to do injections), medical fabric labors (so injections can't be switched with needles containing the virus) and high ranking police officers.
• There will be a monthly check on medium security targets. This is the rest of the military (down to the normal soldier) everyone with regular access to weapons (weapon dealer, cops, private security center,...), nurses, food industry-, logistic- infrastructur workers (no one wants the    sewage  treatment  plant to be sabotaged :-) ).
• There will be a random sampling throughout all social  stratum. Statistics will be updated weekly. Since the incubation time of XVI-H is between 8 to 48 hours, while the infected is not aware of the alien control, this sampling can be used to predict the infection rate in the countries.
• Those individuals within the incubation time normally were not aware to be given an injection at all. However some do remember a blackout. So theese injections don't only contain the virus, but also potent drugs.

I think I will try to upload a nice research report to XVI Census (alt.) within some days. Since I am native german speaking, I can also do the german "translation", of course. But someone should read over my english entry, when its done, since I really doubt, the verbalism will be quite right and sound native english.

Greetings Prinegon.     

[Hertzila]

One thing to correct, XVI isn't virus. It's more akin to a multi-cellular parasite. It simply reproduces like a virus, hence the name. But since there is supposed to be a decent amount of it in the bloodstream and it is a large organism they should be easy to find in tests.

[Legendman3]

Hes got a point its a good point to me but this is like your only post dude and its still a good idea and ive put like 25 and only put half a cent worth in each

[Yatta]

Mister Legendman3, I beg your pardon for beind a total douche, but since its not the first occurence of such problem, I think it was worth a note.

You might be interested in the existence of some 'special characters' that you can use to define a clear structure in your sentence, making it easily understandable to people - which, imho, could include you, as im not absolutely positive you have a clear grasp of what you are trying to say.

Unfortunately, without those 'special characters', your messages cant work unless the end-user spend time debugging them.

...

That said, i tend to agree that the feasibility of checking the whole world population seems not credible, even in a sci-fi game.

[Captain Skill]

Prinegon, I love it! Nice suggestion.

[Jarkill]

Out of curiosity; do the military/police forces have anything better than testing random people to do?

Excluding running from the nearest aliens, of course.

[Jeep-Eep]

Reproduces like a virus. Hmm. Not if it's a Eukaryotic cell which is what it sounds like, since viruses are basicly a bit of DNA or RNA in a protein shell which infiltrate cells and cause it to make copies of itself till the viruses' genes cause the cell to make enzymes to burst itself.

However, there are genera of bacteria and even protozoa which infiltrate cells, for example Chlamydia, Rickettsia Coxiella some varieties of Mycobacterium, such as Tuberculosis Plasmodium (Malaria) and Leishmania.

XVI might pull the exact same trick as these guys. It'd be an excelent way to cross the blood-brain barrier, which it would have to do to have it's effect. The best choices would be red blood cells or macrophages.

[Hertzila]

If you're referring to my comment, check this entry if you don't mind the spoiler. Or did you already check the wiki?

Specifically the "This may be somewhat of a misnomer in microbiological terms; XVI is a complex multi-celled organism far larger than any terrestrial virus, but it acts and replicates exactly like one. Therefore we feel the term is warranted." part.

Welcome to the forums!

Out of curiosity; do the military/police forces have anything better than testing random people to do?

Excluding running from the nearest aliens, of course.

I think there would still be ordinary crimes but I'm not sure would organised crime decrease or increase. On one hand, you would be risking your very survival if you'd cause any harm to governments/PHALANX and, to an extent, to the police forces and militaries. You could actually support them to make sure you don't get wiped out by aliens.
On the other hand, right now most authorities would be searching for aliens and such, so they would be very distracted, making at least some crimes easier. Basically a now-or-never situation.

[Jeep-Eep]

I have read the wiki. But a virus and what you are describing here are completely different animals, so to speak. I don't think you could have a eukaryotic cell invade another cell and override the victims metabolic processes to assemble more of itself. Or, rather, there is no biological precedent. Viruses are simpler than dirt and much more lifeless. This sounds like a fairly complex organism.

I figure XVI looks and behaves very much like malaria. (hell, you could use pictures of malaria cells as placeholders on research) Parasitizes red blood cells. At least until it reaches the CNS (although I'm not sure how it'd find out) Then it leaves the red blood cells and begins to invade the brain, switching into a different phase of it's lifecycle, possibly specializing into several different forms. The lifecycle of this creature could be a mini-tech tree in of inself. The trouble is, how does it avoid the immune system going apesh*t and causing the victim to keel over with encephalitis? Maybe it secrets immunosuppressants and one possible symptom of infection is anomalous immune depression. Or it grabs the hosts own antigens and coats itself so the hosts immune system views it as self? It could have a very detailed life cycle. Another question is: how transmissible is this critter? Blood to blood only? Mucus membranes? foodborne? Mosquitoes?

I'm just trying to harden up your bioscience up to the levels that the rest of the project shows. That, and people screwing up their biology winds me up.

[Hertzila]

Remember that XVI is (most likely) an engineered organism. While still limited to biology and psionics (kinda like telekinesis and telepathy IIUC), you should consider what aliens could do with genetic engineering.

At least until it reaches the CNS (although I'm not sure how it'd find out)

Genetic engineering or psionic perhaps?

Then it leaves the red blood cells and begins to invade the brain, switching into a different phase of it's lifecycle, possibly specializing into several different forms. The lifecycle of this creature could be a mini-tech tree in of inself.

Could there even be a possibility that at one of those phases it could order the "cell factories (was it bone marrow?)" to make more of itself?

The trouble is, how does it avoid the immune system going apesh*t and causing the victim to keel over with encephalitis? Maybe it secrets immunosuppressants and one possible symptom of infection is anomalous immune depression. Or it grabs the hosts own antigens and coats itself so the hosts immune system views it as self?

I'm guessing this is where the "GE" tag shines brightly. Every species has its own version of XVI so maybe they spotted common "weak points" in the single species immune system and calibrated the XVI to exploit them. E.g., try to give tamans XVI to humans and it's quickly eliminated.

Another question is: how transmissible is this critter? Blood to blood only? Mucus membranes? foodborne? Mosquitoes?

Blood to blood only, though there is a bit of conflicting info about how much you need infected blood for the infection to take root. On one hand, at one of those research entries the scientist said that even a drop of blood could cause it. On the other hand, aliens have pretty big robots made specifically to replace most of the victims blood with infected blood, which to me makes sense only if you need a huge amount of XVI to combat the immune system and cause an infection.


For the record, while I think I'm not the worst person in the world at biology I'm not exactly good either. So excuse me if I have made a basic mistake somewhere.

[Jeep-Eep]

Could there even be a possibility that at one of those phases it could order the "cell factories (was it bone marrow?)" to make more of itself?

No. Blood cells are daughter cells of bone marrow. I don't think you could do that. Besides, it wouldn't take too much modification between strains if it scavenged cells for materials, rather than having to accomodate the cellular machinery of several different biologies. Granted, that's still a lot of work. Like, say, if one alien's biochemistry used arsenic rather than phosphorus. But doable.

As for amount, that isn't necessarily contradictory. It could be that transfusion is the quickest way to induce the load of infection necessary to cause subversion. The single drop would be slow. It would take a long time for XVI to reach critical mass. That might be how they turned Dr Eisenhower. An agent of theirs pokes him in the street with a modified umbrella before he reported for duty at PHALANAX. He doesn't notice. Not knowing that his time as an independant intelect is limited. Not sure if it is sudden or if he would start feeling something wrong before total subversion. Wouldn't be surprised if there were other symptoms. He might have been running a fever. Nothing dramatic. Something that would be mistaken for a mild Flu or a cold. Different styles of infection for different purposes. Be good for story and atmosphere. The bloody hatchet and the poisoned jab. Good paranioa fuel.