Attempting to Survive the Apocalypse: Dimensional Dislocation
- Thread starter Rukia
- Start date
- Crossover Sci-Fi Fantasy
- Location
- Canada
[x] America
Last edited:
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
[x] America
Obligatory vote because nobody else will.
Objectively speaking though, Russia is by far the best option.
Obligatory vote because nobody else will.
Objectively speaking though, Russia is by far the best option.
[X] Russia
For the fate of the world, we shall Serve Russia!
For the fate of the world, we shall Serve Russia!
- Location
- Brazil
So a few thoughts on the information gained here
We will have slightly more time in Europe and Russia than we will have in America it seems, but Persica herself said that the situation is likely to get worse in a year or two, which means stronger starting power might make a significant difference, but take or give a bit of time to these estimates due to Persica being hurried here
Europe is both where most of Persica peers are and is remarkably well rounded, with its main disadvantage seeming to be the need for either politics or some other method to both gain access to information about the Fluid (mentions espionage) and possibly do our more controversial actions, while it does not have as much starting power as America does, it also won't lose as much to the global collapse, and it still has room to grow better
Russia is the conservative option, capable of more easily resisting the collapse of the world but adding restrictions to our movements and possibly having some problems with leadership(?) it does have immediate access to Collapse Fluid research and is by a landslide the most capable of growth, no mentions of military power though.
The biggest red flag with Russia is actually the lack of knowledge we have on The Void That Looks Back, not knowing what it does and having nothing to leverage against it might make things difficult, its the most likely option of surviving everything, but its also the least likely to reduce the effects of everything.
America is the go big or go home one, massive military power, great ability to research, Collapse Fluid research is available, and... its the most likely to die when things start going to shit and have some complications even when if we successfully avoid the worst
Although it's possible for us to not feel the food shortage much at all due to the "civilization is ending" thing, not being the most capable alone has the problem of either needing to stockpile on unperishable food or finding another way to get it during the collapse, It can absolutely fuck up anything that looks at it funny though.
Effectively, Russia is the least capable of prep work but also the one that needs it the least, America is the most capable but also really needs it, with Europe being somewhere in the middle, with the country's growth rate being the inverse of that list.
This means of course that I'm switching to America because fuck yeah.
We will have slightly more time in Europe and Russia than we will have in America it seems, but Persica herself said that the situation is likely to get worse in a year or two, which means stronger starting power might make a significant difference, but take or give a bit of time to these estimates due to Persica being hurried here
Europe is both where most of Persica peers are and is remarkably well rounded, with its main disadvantage seeming to be the need for either politics or some other method to both gain access to information about the Fluid (mentions espionage) and possibly do our more controversial actions, while it does not have as much starting power as America does, it also won't lose as much to the global collapse, and it still has room to grow better
Russia is the conservative option, capable of more easily resisting the collapse of the world but adding restrictions to our movements and possibly having some problems with leadership(?) it does have immediate access to Collapse Fluid research and is by a landslide the most capable of growth, no mentions of military power though.
The biggest red flag with Russia is actually the lack of knowledge we have on The Void That Looks Back, not knowing what it does and having nothing to leverage against it might make things difficult, its the most likely option of surviving everything, but its also the least likely to reduce the effects of everything.
America is the go big or go home one, massive military power, great ability to research, Collapse Fluid research is available, and... its the most likely to die when things start going to shit and have some complications even when if we successfully avoid the worst
Although it's possible for us to not feel the food shortage much at all due to the "civilization is ending" thing, not being the most capable alone has the problem of either needing to stockpile on unperishable food or finding another way to get it during the collapse, It can absolutely fuck up anything that looks at it funny though.
Effectively, Russia is the least capable of prep work but also the one that needs it the least, America is the most capable but also really needs it, with Europe being somewhere in the middle, with the country's growth rate being the inverse of that list.
This means of course that I'm switching to America because fuck yeah.
- Pronouns
- he
[X] Europe
[X] Russia
because america is overdone
[X] Russia
because america is overdone
Q1 2025
- Location
- England
Q1 2025
Human Population as of 2025: 8,184,437,460
Humans Surviving: 6,684,437,460
Your arrival back in Europe was something of a relief, all things considered it was somewhat reassuring to be kidnap-rescued by your biggest benefactors rather than a foreign power. Of course, you were quickly shuffled off to give a briefing to the brand new "European Emergency Council", the nameplates on the tables of that office were so new they were still shiny. Your report was one amongst several detailing the situation, but given the total information blackout caused by the Collapse Radiation blocking satellite communication through it, it was somewhat depressing to say that your personal eyewitness report and calculations were the most accurate by far.
Everyone else was sent away, but a nearby soldier was quick to quietly pull you aside and ask you to wait, apparently they weren't quite done with you yet. You pass the time by shooting off messages to your colleagues to see who had managed to make it back already, a depressingly low number replied as promptly as you were used to, but you held out hope that the others were still travelling. After a mercifully brief 20 minute wait you were led back into the room and stood before the very unhappy gazes of nearly thirty very panicked politicians. The request they had for you was simple, "exactly how bad is the situation?"
Well, you could certainly answer that. "This is as close to an apocalypse as humanity will ever find, humans exposed to Collapse Radiation will inevitably die within 12 to 24 hours. The cloud of radiation slowly heading towards us is more than large enough to cover the entire planet for at least a century, which would kill every single human not inside a radiologically sealed structure." A heavy silence settles over the room before you press on. "It is possible for humanity to survive this, but immediate and drastic action will have to be taken. Sealed structures need to be constructed, along with enough resources to sustain their populations, all production must be shifted to automation and either remote or fully automated drones need to be created to take over harvesting resources."
Thoughts rapidly whirl around your mind as you take in the immensity of the problem before you, speaking more quickly as you continue. "It is certainly possible to create sealed suits that would allow humans to operate out in the world, but they would be bulky and impractical to work in. But well..." The problem you had been furiously thinking about on your flight over, running the numbers again and again. "The vast majority of the population is going to die." You let the words settle in. "It's not possible to construct the quantity of specialised housing required to save everyone, let alone the sealed agriculture to sustain them. If you give me a few days I can get back to you with more accurate figures, but for now the best I can say is 10 million people." You had no doubt your numbers were very wrong, but it's the best you could do in the scant few hours you had available.
Your second exit from the room is much quieter, a heavy silence following your footsteps before the doors behind you seal shut. Ignoring the soldiers to either side you lean back against the door, a sense of bone-deep exhaustion settling into your body as you stop repressing and internalise the news you had just given so confidently. Two point two percent. The estimated number of people that might survive.
One of the guards helpfully points you towards your temporary bedroom for the night, an opulent room probably used for visiting diplomats or something. Despite the luxury of the bed, sleep doesn't come easy that night, and the message waiting for you in the morning makes you wish you had never gotten up. "You are hereby promoted to head of the newly established Future Foundation, effective immediately. Report to the location attached to this message. You will find your duties waiting for you." As if that wasn't enough, attached was a second file, just titled "Read This Second."
The headline of the starkly clinical report has you blinking as you check it again. Recorded Interdimensional Creatures. You quickly scan through the document, quickly putting the pieces together. Collapse Fluid in high concentrations causes exotic changes to the fabric of reality, up to and including breaching into other dimensions. A clear image shows some kind of quadrupedal creature that you are completely confident has never existed on Earth, it is bleeding from hundreds of small injuries, the sickly green of Collapse Fluid visible mixed in with it's pitch black blood.
You read further and see the piece of information that makes things click. Note: These creatures have only ever been spotted near concentrations of the exotic material known as "Collapse Fluid" [Report X-CF-1951]. This, along with the presence of small amounts found within the body and blood seem to provide irrevocable proof that they are native of whatever dimension is leaking Collapse Fluid into ours. ["Theories of Collapse Fluid Source" USSR-CF-1987].
Of course, wonderful. Interdimensional Horrors that crawl through cracks in reality caused by the presence of Collapse Fluid Radiation, the exact thing that is currently slowly encompassing the entire planet at this very moment.
You give a very long look at the shelf of wine generously stocked for some visiting dignitary before sighing and turning away, picking up the meagre few things you had managed to bring with you before setting off for your new "office" deeper within the building.
It is a very rare occasion that you feel shocked enough to freeze and stare, but when you find the vast quantities of resources that had been allocated to your newly created department with the message "Do everything you can with what we have while we still have it."
Resources: Temporarily Infinite
Political Support: 50(?)
Public Confidence: 40/100
Note: Any action that might convince the public that the government isn't capable of and isn't planning on saving their lives will be met with extreme disapproval. Keeping confidence high is critical.
Economic Factors
(Each unit provides for 10,000 people. 1 Sealed Housing keeps 10,000. 1 Sealed Agriculture feeds 10,000)
Sealed Housing: 0
Sealed Agriculture: 0
Decontaminated Water: 0
Sealed Power: 0
Sealed Industry: 0
Radiation Suits: 0
Infrastructure (3 + 7 Temporary Dice)
[] Sealed Housing (Stage 1)
Begin designing and testing the structures that are going to be new new home for humanity for the foreseeable future, they must be proof against Collapse Radiation for decades with minimal maintenance while remaining comfortable enough not to drive their inhabitants insane. As soon as your designs are finished they will be submitted to the Emergency Council for massive crash construction.
(0/300 +10 Public Confidence)
[] Sealed Personnel Transportation
Design transports that can safely get someone from A to B while preventing them from dying a horrible death via Collapse Radiation. Much of the technology being used in this has been repurposed from military NBC systems found in armoured vehicles.
(0/100)
[] Sealed Logistical Transportation
Design transports that can move goods around the Union without allowing them to be irradiated, rendering them deadly to humans. This will include a complete redesign of logistic hubs to allow the contents to be delivered and picked up without leaking radiation everywhere.
-[] Trains (0/200) (Stage 1)
-[] Lorries (0/100) (Stage 1)
-[] Cargo Ships (0/200) (Stage 1)
[] Sealed Power Plants
The technology maintaining the radiological seal on the new housing requires 24/7 power, even an outage for just a few hours will begin to let radiation seep in. A new model of Nuclear Reactor, much smaller, but both easier to operate and faster to build must be designed. These new reactors can be emplaced locally to sealed housing to ensure constant power throughput.
(0/300)
[] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1)
The water supply is yet another vector through which Collapse Radiation can find it's way into the human body, new designs of processing plants must be created to properly filter out the radiation. Large modifications will need to be made to the plants to filter out the contaminant.
(0/100 +5 Public Confidence)
Industry (3 + 2 Temporary Dice)
[] Automated Factories (Stage 1)
Many factories already make use of heavy automation for increased efficiency, in the future there won't be enough people nor will it be safe to try filling out the gaps with humans. This new design of automated factory will be capable of taking a shipment of materials and outputting the finished product entirely autonomously.
(0/300)
[] Remote Worker Drones
Humans won't be able to exit their homes without bulky radiation equipment, they need some way to work on the outside world. This first, extremely rushed, model is a simple wheeled drone with two arms fit for attaching either graspers or tools. Not much is known about the disruptive effect Collapse Radiation has on communications, so this first series sports a thick cable connecting it back to the operator.
(0/300 -10 Public Confidence)
[] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1)
No-one knows if Collapse Radiation will render the land entirely barren, but any food grown in the presence of the stuff will be equally inedible by humans, perfectly sealed facilities need to be created that can supply the similarly sealed housing. Designing facilities capable of growing the bare minimum essentials for human life is just as important as housing.
(0/200 +15 Public Confidence)
[] New Model Radiation Suit
Older model radiation suits are merely effective at lowering the dosage of radiation that the user is exposed to, this is nowhere near enough for Collapse Radiation, these new suits must also be comfortable to wear for extended stretches of time, including... waste processing systems. The bulk of these designs makes them unwieldy to the extreme and tiring to operate.
(0/100 +5 Public Confidence)
[] Collapse Radiation Detectors
Even the smallest amounts of Collapse Radiation can be deadly. Newer, better detectors of this kind of radiation need to be put into production, for both your own use and to find their way into the hands of the public.
(0/50 +5 Public Confidence)
Services (3 + 1 Temporary Dice)
[] Introduce Automated Management
Ordinarily, humans don't like being managed by a computer and told what to do. Personally, you don't mind it all that much, and this is far too important of a task to let silly things like human mistakes cost humanity time. Every second lost guarantees countless lives death.
(0/100 +1 Free Dice -5 Political Support)
[] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans
It is going to be required to move massive quantities of people as the radiation cloud begins to encroach upon the borders of the Union. People will feel a lot more reassured that the Government has a plan to get them out of the way, regardless of how useful that actually is.
(0/150 +20 Public Confidence)
[] Identify VIP For Housing Shortlist
Identify the people who can provide the most value to humanity by remaining alive. Researchers, Engineers and (reluctantly) Politicians. This is a project that must never find it's way into the public eye, for it would spark riots like wildfire.
(0/50)
[] Establish Military VIP List For Housing Shortlist
By promising members of the military housing if the worst comes, you can make sure that they are not going to turn against you when the worst comes.
(0/50 -30 Public Confidence)
Military (3 Dice + 1 Temporary Dice)
[] Establish Special Operations Barracks
Create a military unit specialised for operating in the worst conditions imaginable, they can't safely move within Collapse Radiation until they are given further equipment, but they have extensive experience operating in normal radiation. Everyone hopes that the experience carries over.
(0/100)
[] Radiation Exoskeleton
A variant of the New Model Radiation Suit that has a passive Exoskeleton to help balance and distribute the load of the suit. Significantly easier to move about in as the exoskeleton takes a great deal of the burden off of the user. Too expensive to issue to the general populace, but perfect for specialised or military usage.
(0/50) (Must be taken with or after New Model Radiation Suit) (Allows for Operations in Collapse Radiation)
[] Military Robotics
Any kind of combat inside Collapse Radiation is insanely perilous for human operators. A sharp edge or a single bullet will compromise their suit and spell certain death for them. You know just the thing. Robots do not tire, they do not bleed and they do not care about Collapse Radiation.
(0/200)
[] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1)
Refit the NBC equipment already present in military vehicles, bases and bunkers to be capable of standing up to Collapse Radiation.
(0/50 +5 Political Support)
Dimensional (3 Dice)
[] Gather Proper Readings
At the moment, plans are being based around a theoretical knowledge of Collapse Fluid and extremely brief observations by individual researchers. This has left teams making assumptions on how Collapse Radiation functions and spreads.
(0/100) (Urgent) (Unlocks World Map)
[] Review Existing Records
You were handed an enormous amount of records and very few of them were sensibly labelled, but you know that somewhere in here are the documents the EU had gathered on Collapse Fluid and these Interdimensional Creatures.
(0/50)
[] Reality Sensors?
Well, you now know that Collapse Fluid somehow weakens the barriers between dimensions, also proving that alternate dimensions exist at the same time. Having some way to detect these fluctuations or weak spots would be incredibly useful at finding places these Interdimensional Creatures -Note, come up with a better code name- were crawling into our reality through.
(0/300)
Personal (1 Dice)
[] Personal Project - Digital Minds
As much as it grates on you that you had to leave your latest breakthrough behind in China, you can use what you learned to create an experimental new type of AI. This version is nowhere near what you were approaching before, but it's a step back in the right direction.
[] Reconnect
Now that you have time, try to reconnect to all of your contacts. Find out who made it safely back home or not.
(Enables Recruitment of Specialists)
+5 Dice Bonus
[] Dice Type?
Human Population as of 2025: 8,184,437,460
Humans Surviving: 6,684,437,460
Your arrival back in Europe was something of a relief, all things considered it was somewhat reassuring to be kidnap-rescued by your biggest benefactors rather than a foreign power. Of course, you were quickly shuffled off to give a briefing to the brand new "European Emergency Council", the nameplates on the tables of that office were so new they were still shiny. Your report was one amongst several detailing the situation, but given the total information blackout caused by the Collapse Radiation blocking satellite communication through it, it was somewhat depressing to say that your personal eyewitness report and calculations were the most accurate by far.
Everyone else was sent away, but a nearby soldier was quick to quietly pull you aside and ask you to wait, apparently they weren't quite done with you yet. You pass the time by shooting off messages to your colleagues to see who had managed to make it back already, a depressingly low number replied as promptly as you were used to, but you held out hope that the others were still travelling. After a mercifully brief 20 minute wait you were led back into the room and stood before the very unhappy gazes of nearly thirty very panicked politicians. The request they had for you was simple, "exactly how bad is the situation?"
Well, you could certainly answer that. "This is as close to an apocalypse as humanity will ever find, humans exposed to Collapse Radiation will inevitably die within 12 to 24 hours. The cloud of radiation slowly heading towards us is more than large enough to cover the entire planet for at least a century, which would kill every single human not inside a radiologically sealed structure." A heavy silence settles over the room before you press on. "It is possible for humanity to survive this, but immediate and drastic action will have to be taken. Sealed structures need to be constructed, along with enough resources to sustain their populations, all production must be shifted to automation and either remote or fully automated drones need to be created to take over harvesting resources."
Thoughts rapidly whirl around your mind as you take in the immensity of the problem before you, speaking more quickly as you continue. "It is certainly possible to create sealed suits that would allow humans to operate out in the world, but they would be bulky and impractical to work in. But well..." The problem you had been furiously thinking about on your flight over, running the numbers again and again. "The vast majority of the population is going to die." You let the words settle in. "It's not possible to construct the quantity of specialised housing required to save everyone, let alone the sealed agriculture to sustain them. If you give me a few days I can get back to you with more accurate figures, but for now the best I can say is 10 million people." You had no doubt your numbers were very wrong, but it's the best you could do in the scant few hours you had available.
Your second exit from the room is much quieter, a heavy silence following your footsteps before the doors behind you seal shut. Ignoring the soldiers to either side you lean back against the door, a sense of bone-deep exhaustion settling into your body as you stop repressing and internalise the news you had just given so confidently. Two point two percent. The estimated number of people that might survive.
One of the guards helpfully points you towards your temporary bedroom for the night, an opulent room probably used for visiting diplomats or something. Despite the luxury of the bed, sleep doesn't come easy that night, and the message waiting for you in the morning makes you wish you had never gotten up. "You are hereby promoted to head of the newly established Future Foundation, effective immediately. Report to the location attached to this message. You will find your duties waiting for you." As if that wasn't enough, attached was a second file, just titled "Read This Second."
The headline of the starkly clinical report has you blinking as you check it again. Recorded Interdimensional Creatures. You quickly scan through the document, quickly putting the pieces together. Collapse Fluid in high concentrations causes exotic changes to the fabric of reality, up to and including breaching into other dimensions. A clear image shows some kind of quadrupedal creature that you are completely confident has never existed on Earth, it is bleeding from hundreds of small injuries, the sickly green of Collapse Fluid visible mixed in with it's pitch black blood.
You read further and see the piece of information that makes things click. Note: These creatures have only ever been spotted near concentrations of the exotic material known as "Collapse Fluid" [Report X-CF-1951]. This, along with the presence of small amounts found within the body and blood seem to provide irrevocable proof that they are native of whatever dimension is leaking Collapse Fluid into ours. ["Theories of Collapse Fluid Source" USSR-CF-1987].
Of course, wonderful. Interdimensional Horrors that crawl through cracks in reality caused by the presence of Collapse Fluid Radiation, the exact thing that is currently slowly encompassing the entire planet at this very moment.
You give a very long look at the shelf of wine generously stocked for some visiting dignitary before sighing and turning away, picking up the meagre few things you had managed to bring with you before setting off for your new "office" deeper within the building.
It is a very rare occasion that you feel shocked enough to freeze and stare, but when you find the vast quantities of resources that had been allocated to your newly created department with the message "Do everything you can with what we have while we still have it."
Resources: Temporarily Infinite
Political Support: 50(?)
Public Confidence: 40/100
Note: Any action that might convince the public that the government isn't capable of and isn't planning on saving their lives will be met with extreme disapproval. Keeping confidence high is critical.
Economic Factors
(Each unit provides for 10,000 people. 1 Sealed Housing keeps 10,000. 1 Sealed Agriculture feeds 10,000)
Sealed Housing: 0
Sealed Agriculture: 0
Decontaminated Water: 0
Sealed Power: 0
Sealed Industry: 0
Radiation Suits: 0
Infrastructure (3 + 7 Temporary Dice)
[] Sealed Housing (Stage 1)
Begin designing and testing the structures that are going to be new new home for humanity for the foreseeable future, they must be proof against Collapse Radiation for decades with minimal maintenance while remaining comfortable enough not to drive their inhabitants insane. As soon as your designs are finished they will be submitted to the Emergency Council for massive crash construction.
(0/300 +10 Public Confidence)
[] Sealed Personnel Transportation
Design transports that can safely get someone from A to B while preventing them from dying a horrible death via Collapse Radiation. Much of the technology being used in this has been repurposed from military NBC systems found in armoured vehicles.
(0/100)
[] Sealed Logistical Transportation
Design transports that can move goods around the Union without allowing them to be irradiated, rendering them deadly to humans. This will include a complete redesign of logistic hubs to allow the contents to be delivered and picked up without leaking radiation everywhere.
-[] Trains (0/200) (Stage 1)
-[] Lorries (0/100) (Stage 1)
-[] Cargo Ships (0/200) (Stage 1)
[] Sealed Power Plants
The technology maintaining the radiological seal on the new housing requires 24/7 power, even an outage for just a few hours will begin to let radiation seep in. A new model of Nuclear Reactor, much smaller, but both easier to operate and faster to build must be designed. These new reactors can be emplaced locally to sealed housing to ensure constant power throughput.
(0/300)
[] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1)
The water supply is yet another vector through which Collapse Radiation can find it's way into the human body, new designs of processing plants must be created to properly filter out the radiation. Large modifications will need to be made to the plants to filter out the contaminant.
(0/100 +5 Public Confidence)
Industry (3 + 2 Temporary Dice)
[] Automated Factories (Stage 1)
Many factories already make use of heavy automation for increased efficiency, in the future there won't be enough people nor will it be safe to try filling out the gaps with humans. This new design of automated factory will be capable of taking a shipment of materials and outputting the finished product entirely autonomously.
(0/300)
[] Remote Worker Drones
Humans won't be able to exit their homes without bulky radiation equipment, they need some way to work on the outside world. This first, extremely rushed, model is a simple wheeled drone with two arms fit for attaching either graspers or tools. Not much is known about the disruptive effect Collapse Radiation has on communications, so this first series sports a thick cable connecting it back to the operator.
(0/300 -10 Public Confidence)
[] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1)
No-one knows if Collapse Radiation will render the land entirely barren, but any food grown in the presence of the stuff will be equally inedible by humans, perfectly sealed facilities need to be created that can supply the similarly sealed housing. Designing facilities capable of growing the bare minimum essentials for human life is just as important as housing.
(0/200 +15 Public Confidence)
[] New Model Radiation Suit
Older model radiation suits are merely effective at lowering the dosage of radiation that the user is exposed to, this is nowhere near enough for Collapse Radiation, these new suits must also be comfortable to wear for extended stretches of time, including... waste processing systems. The bulk of these designs makes them unwieldy to the extreme and tiring to operate.
(0/100 +5 Public Confidence)
[] Collapse Radiation Detectors
Even the smallest amounts of Collapse Radiation can be deadly. Newer, better detectors of this kind of radiation need to be put into production, for both your own use and to find their way into the hands of the public.
(0/50 +5 Public Confidence)
Services (3 + 1 Temporary Dice)
[] Introduce Automated Management
Ordinarily, humans don't like being managed by a computer and told what to do. Personally, you don't mind it all that much, and this is far too important of a task to let silly things like human mistakes cost humanity time. Every second lost guarantees countless lives death.
(0/100 +1 Free Dice -5 Political Support)
[] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans
It is going to be required to move massive quantities of people as the radiation cloud begins to encroach upon the borders of the Union. People will feel a lot more reassured that the Government has a plan to get them out of the way, regardless of how useful that actually is.
(0/150 +20 Public Confidence)
[] Identify VIP For Housing Shortlist
Identify the people who can provide the most value to humanity by remaining alive. Researchers, Engineers and (reluctantly) Politicians. This is a project that must never find it's way into the public eye, for it would spark riots like wildfire.
(0/50)
[] Establish Military VIP List For Housing Shortlist
By promising members of the military housing if the worst comes, you can make sure that they are not going to turn against you when the worst comes.
(0/50 -30 Public Confidence)
Military (3 Dice + 1 Temporary Dice)
[] Establish Special Operations Barracks
Create a military unit specialised for operating in the worst conditions imaginable, they can't safely move within Collapse Radiation until they are given further equipment, but they have extensive experience operating in normal radiation. Everyone hopes that the experience carries over.
(0/100)
[] Radiation Exoskeleton
A variant of the New Model Radiation Suit that has a passive Exoskeleton to help balance and distribute the load of the suit. Significantly easier to move about in as the exoskeleton takes a great deal of the burden off of the user. Too expensive to issue to the general populace, but perfect for specialised or military usage.
(0/50) (Must be taken with or after New Model Radiation Suit) (Allows for Operations in Collapse Radiation)
[] Military Robotics
Any kind of combat inside Collapse Radiation is insanely perilous for human operators. A sharp edge or a single bullet will compromise their suit and spell certain death for them. You know just the thing. Robots do not tire, they do not bleed and they do not care about Collapse Radiation.
(0/200)
[] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1)
Refit the NBC equipment already present in military vehicles, bases and bunkers to be capable of standing up to Collapse Radiation.
(0/50 +5 Political Support)
Dimensional (3 Dice)
[] Gather Proper Readings
At the moment, plans are being based around a theoretical knowledge of Collapse Fluid and extremely brief observations by individual researchers. This has left teams making assumptions on how Collapse Radiation functions and spreads.
(0/100) (Urgent) (Unlocks World Map)
[] Review Existing Records
You were handed an enormous amount of records and very few of them were sensibly labelled, but you know that somewhere in here are the documents the EU had gathered on Collapse Fluid and these Interdimensional Creatures.
(0/50)
[] Reality Sensors?
Well, you now know that Collapse Fluid somehow weakens the barriers between dimensions, also proving that alternate dimensions exist at the same time. Having some way to detect these fluctuations or weak spots would be incredibly useful at finding places these Interdimensional Creatures -Note, come up with a better code name- were crawling into our reality through.
(0/300)
Personal (1 Dice)
[] Personal Project - Digital Minds
As much as it grates on you that you had to leave your latest breakthrough behind in China, you can use what you learned to create an experimental new type of AI. This version is nowhere near what you were approaching before, but it's a step back in the right direction.
[] Reconnect
Now that you have time, try to reconnect to all of your contacts. Find out who made it safely back home or not.
(Enables Recruitment of Specialists)
+5 Dice Bonus
[] Dice Type?
Last edited:
- Location
- Canada
[X] Plan Housing, Radiation and Free Dice
-[X] Sealed Housing (Stage 1) 4D
-[X] Sealed Power Plants 4D
-[X] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1) 2D
-[X] New Model Radiation Suit 2D
-[X] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1) 2D
-[X] Collapse Radiation Detectors 1D
-[X] Introduce Automated Management 3D
-[X] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans 1D
-[X] Radiation Exoskeleton 1D
-[X] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1) 2D
-[X] Military Robotics 1D
-[X] Gather Proper Readings 3D
-[X] Reconnect
-[X] Dice Bonus: Infrastructure
Any changes you guys would recommend I change?
Though the only other thing I think should get the dice bonus would be industry.
-[X] Sealed Housing (Stage 1) 4D
-[X] Sealed Power Plants 4D
-[X] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1) 2D
-[X] New Model Radiation Suit 2D
-[X] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1) 2D
-[X] Collapse Radiation Detectors 1D
-[X] Introduce Automated Management 3D
-[X] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans 1D
-[X] Radiation Exoskeleton 1D
-[X] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1) 2D
-[X] Military Robotics 1D
-[X] Gather Proper Readings 3D
-[X] Reconnect
-[X] Dice Bonus: Infrastructure
Any changes you guys would recommend I change?
Though the only other thing I think should get the dice bonus would be industry.
Last edited:
- Location
- Brazil
Oh boy do I love hate math
My thoughts on everything based on category
gonna take a small break due to my wrists and will comment on any plans that have been posted so far
Edit: Keep in mind Persica gets +5 to all her rolls due to her genius/lazy traits(lazy nerfs genius), so some things are a bit safer than they look!
My thoughts on everything based on category
Due to the sheer number of dice we have here, this is probably where we are going to put our +5 bonus due to sheer efficiency
3+7 dice
[] Sealed Housing (Stage 1)
(0/300 +10 Public Confidence)
Need to do this eventually, but 300 progress necessary hurts a lot, specially since we want literally everything here but we do have time to build this according to Persica quick math, so maybe wait a bit and go for transports instead? but the quicker we start with this the faster the country will start actually building them.
[] Sealed Personnel Transportation
(0/100)
Prevents people from randomly dying to Collapse fluid when travelling with vehicles, seems like the sort of stuff that would prevent passive public confidence loss and its one of the cheapest items we have here but unlike everything else its not staged
[] Sealed Logistical Transportation
-[] Trains (0/200) (Stage 1)
-[] Lorries (0/100) (Stage 1)
-[] Cargo Ships (0/200) (Stage 1)
Not fully confident talking about cargo transporting, but i think Lorries are the easiest to get going quickly while Trains and Cargo ships are going to need some work to maitain, function and defend but will work better when they do?
[] Sealed Power Plants
(0/300)
This seems really important, making sure our important tech does not fail and seems like not getting this makes our other stuff unreliable from its description
[] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1)
(0/100 +5 Public Confidence)
Staged, short progress, gives public confidence which we were told is a stat we need to get and keep high, and is necessary for long term survival?
Dumping some dice on this sounds like a good idea, at least enough to reliably get stage 1 done.
3+7 dice
[] Sealed Housing (Stage 1)
(0/300 +10 Public Confidence)
Need to do this eventually, but 300 progress necessary hurts a lot, specially since we want literally everything here but we do have time to build this according to Persica quick math, so maybe wait a bit and go for transports instead? but the quicker we start with this the faster the country will start actually building them.
[] Sealed Personnel Transportation
(0/100)
Prevents people from randomly dying to Collapse fluid when travelling with vehicles, seems like the sort of stuff that would prevent passive public confidence loss and its one of the cheapest items we have here but unlike everything else its not staged
[] Sealed Logistical Transportation
-[] Trains (0/200) (Stage 1)
-[] Lorries (0/100) (Stage 1)
-[] Cargo Ships (0/200) (Stage 1)
Not fully confident talking about cargo transporting, but i think Lorries are the easiest to get going quickly while Trains and Cargo ships are going to need some work to maitain, function and defend but will work better when they do?
[] Sealed Power Plants
(0/300)
This seems really important, making sure our important tech does not fail and seems like not getting this makes our other stuff unreliable from its description
[] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1)
(0/100 +5 Public Confidence)
Staged, short progress, gives public confidence which we were told is a stat we need to get and keep high, and is necessary for long term survival?
Dumping some dice on this sounds like a good idea, at least enough to reliably get stage 1 done.
3+2 dice
[] Automated Factories (Stage 1)
(0/300)
Seems like the sort of option that boosts the country economy and is just generally useful, but also costs a lot of progress so ehhhhh
[] Remote Worker Drones
(0/300 -10 Public Confidence)
Something for later, dropping public confidence and needing a lot of progress are both things we can't afford right now in this category.
[] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1)
(0/200 +15 Public Confidence)
Need these eventually, and being staged means we can dump dice here, also probably makes the country more self sufficient?
[] New Model Radiation Suit
(0/100 +5 Public Confidence)
Mostly useful if we want to take Radiaton Exhoskeleton to give something to the military.
[] Collapse Radiation Detectors
(0/50 +5 Public Confidence)
Cheap and generally useful, grabbing these sounds good.
[] Automated Factories (Stage 1)
(0/300)
Seems like the sort of option that boosts the country economy and is just generally useful, but also costs a lot of progress so ehhhhh
[] Remote Worker Drones
(0/300 -10 Public Confidence)
Something for later, dropping public confidence and needing a lot of progress are both things we can't afford right now in this category.
[] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1)
(0/200 +15 Public Confidence)
Need these eventually, and being staged means we can dump dice here, also probably makes the country more self sufficient?
[] New Model Radiation Suit
(0/100 +5 Public Confidence)
Mostly useful if we want to take Radiaton Exhoskeleton to give something to the military.
[] Collapse Radiation Detectors
(0/50 +5 Public Confidence)
Cheap and generally useful, grabbing these sounds good.
3+1 dice
[] Introduce Automated Management
(0/100 +1 Free Dice -5 Political Support)
I want this and will vote for every plan that has it, extra dice is amazing for us considering everything and getting it early will speed everything up
[] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans
(0/150 +20 Public Confidence)
Obvious choice to throw die at outside of automated management.
[] Identify VIP For Housing Shortlist
(0/50)
The last part scares me a shitton, not voting for this right now even though i think we should get it.
[] Establish Military VIP List For Housing Shortlist
(0/50 -30 Public Confidence)
If we can later, once we have actually good public confidence and can maybe burn it.
[] Introduce Automated Management
(0/100 +1 Free Dice -5 Political Support)
I want this and will vote for every plan that has it, extra dice is amazing for us considering everything and getting it early will speed everything up
[] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans
(0/150 +20 Public Confidence)
Obvious choice to throw die at outside of automated management.
[] Identify VIP For Housing Shortlist
(0/50)
The last part scares me a shitton, not voting for this right now even though i think we should get it.
[] Establish Military VIP List For Housing Shortlist
(0/50 -30 Public Confidence)
If we can later, once we have actually good public confidence and can maybe burn it.
3+1 dice
[] Establish Special Operations Barracks
(0/100)
Very eh about it, prefer to go for Robotics, but if we want to go for Radiation Exoskeleton we should also go for this
[] Radiation Exoskeleton
(0/50) (Must be taken with or after New Model Radiation Suit) (Allows for Operations in Collapse Radiation)
Operations sound important, especially to manage the invaders if necessary.
[] Military Robotics
(0/200)
If we take this, we will eventually want to go and focus on Digital Minds and keep at it, cause they will combo really well.
[] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1)
(0/50 +5 Political Support)
Only option that increases political support and let's us go +0 if we take automated management.
[] Establish Special Operations Barracks
(0/100)
Very eh about it, prefer to go for Robotics, but if we want to go for Radiation Exoskeleton we should also go for this
[] Radiation Exoskeleton
(0/50) (Must be taken with or after New Model Radiation Suit) (Allows for Operations in Collapse Radiation)
Operations sound important, especially to manage the invaders if necessary.
[] Military Robotics
(0/200)
If we take this, we will eventually want to go and focus on Digital Minds and keep at it, cause they will combo really well.
[] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1)
(0/50 +5 Political Support)
Only option that increases political support and let's us go +0 if we take automated management.
3 dice
[] Gather Proper Readings
(0/100) (Urgent) (Unlocks World Map)
Minimum 2 die here, won't vote for anything less, only thing that says Urgent afterall
[] Review Existing Records
You were handed an enormous amount of records and very few of them were sensibly labelled, but you know that somewhere in here are the documents the EU had gathered on Collapse Fluid and these Interdimensional Creatures.
(0/50)
This is important and we need it, don't see any reason not to go 1 dice here and 2 on the above unless we want to really make sure we unlock World Map turn 2
[] Reality Sensors?
Well, you now know that Collapse Fluid somehow weakens the barriers between dimensions, also proving that alternate dimensions exist at the same time. Having some way to detect these fluctuations or weak spots would be incredibly useful at finding places these Interdimensional Creatures -Note, come up with a better code name- were crawling into our reality through.
(0/300)
Not right now, needs too much progress and we need dice in other places
[] Gather Proper Readings
(0/100) (Urgent) (Unlocks World Map)
Minimum 2 die here, won't vote for anything less, only thing that says Urgent afterall
[] Review Existing Records
You were handed an enormous amount of records and very few of them were sensibly labelled, but you know that somewhere in here are the documents the EU had gathered on Collapse Fluid and these Interdimensional Creatures.
(0/50)
This is important and we need it, don't see any reason not to go 1 dice here and 2 on the above unless we want to really make sure we unlock World Map turn 2
[] Reality Sensors?
Well, you now know that Collapse Fluid somehow weakens the barriers between dimensions, also proving that alternate dimensions exist at the same time. Having some way to detect these fluctuations or weak spots would be incredibly useful at finding places these Interdimensional Creatures -Note, come up with a better code name- were crawling into our reality through.
(0/300)
Not right now, needs too much progress and we need dice in other places
1 dice rip
[] Personal Project - Digital Minds
As much as it grates on you that you had to leave your latest breakthrough behind in China, you can use what you learned to create an experimental new type of AI. This version is nowhere near what you were approaching before, but it's a step back in the right direction.
[] Reconnect
Now that you have time, try to reconnect to all of your contacts. Find out who made it safely back home or not.
(Enables Recruitment of Specialists)
Of the two, i prefer specialists since we need immediate power, but i think we should go and focus on Digital Minds immediately after unless something really important comes up, its Persica unique little thing and it will probably change how things go significantly
[] Personal Project - Digital Minds
As much as it grates on you that you had to leave your latest breakthrough behind in China, you can use what you learned to create an experimental new type of AI. This version is nowhere near what you were approaching before, but it's a step back in the right direction.
[] Reconnect
Now that you have time, try to reconnect to all of your contacts. Find out who made it safely back home or not.
(Enables Recruitment of Specialists)
Of the two, i prefer specialists since we need immediate power, but i think we should go and focus on Digital Minds immediately after unless something really important comes up, its Persica unique little thing and it will probably change how things go significantly
gonna take a small break due to my wrists and will comment on any plans that have been posted so far
Edit: Keep in mind Persica gets +5 to all her rolls due to her genius/lazy traits(lazy nerfs genius), so some things are a bit safer than they look!
Last edited:
- Location
- Brazil
Since no one posted things for a while, im going to do it myself
Bits of comments on the current plan
A bit of an altered plan below for risk takers and to generate discussion
Still not voting though
Infrastructure 3+7D
-[] Sealed Personnel Transportation 2D
-[] Sealed Power Plants 4D
-Sealed Logistical Transportation
--[] Lorries (Stage 1) 2D
-[] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1) 2D
Industry 3+2D
-[] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1) 4D
-[] Collapse Radiation Detectors 1D
Services 3+1D
-[] Introduce Automated Management 3D
-[] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans 1D
Military 3+1D
-[] Military Robotics 3D
-[] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1) 1D
Dimensional 3D
-[] Gather Proper Readings 2D
-[] Review Existing Records 1D
Personal 1D
-[] Reconnect
-[] Dice Bonus: Infrastructure
Again, probably better to go full in on Proper readings but i like my action economy even if it kills me.
Bits of comments on the current plan
Infrastructure
-[] Sealed Housing (Stage 1) 4D
-[] Sealed Power Plants 4D
-[] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1) 2D
Infrastructure is fine, it getting the dice bonus makes sense considering how much we need to do and the quantity of dice we have, and focusing on a few areas is good to get things finished.
Industry
-[] New Model Radiation Suit 2D
-[] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1) 2D
-[] Collapse Radiation Detectors 1D
This is also fine, going harder on Public Confidence here is good considering how cheap things are, we need to start working on Agriculture anyway, and the rest is kind of really expensive and needs dice thrown at it to work out
Services
-[] Introduce Automated Management 3D
-[] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans 1D
Automated Management is too important to let fail turn 1, and Evacuation plans is the only other thing we can get that wont potentially screw us over later
Military
-[] Radiation Exoskeleton 1D
-[] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1) 2D
-[] Military Robotics 1D
Special operation barracks is a somewhat low hanging fruit that is not being taken, but the description itself not being very optmistic so that makes sense , Collapse Radiation Refits give Political support and is just generally a good thing to get early on, Radiaton Exoskeleton is fine for quick utility and taking advantage of radiation suit, but i would like to phase out people and just go for robots for the military considering who we are playing.
Dimensional
-[] Gather Proper Readings 3D
While im the sort of person to go greedy and read the research as well, considering its the only urgent action on the whole update using 3D is fine
Personal
-[] Reconnect
-[] Dice Bonus: Infrastructure
Reconnect is the most likely to give us immediate power and action economy, im fine with this
Separated things a bit to make them easier to look at
-[] Sealed Housing (Stage 1) 4D
-[] Sealed Power Plants 4D
-[] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1) 2D
Infrastructure is fine, it getting the dice bonus makes sense considering how much we need to do and the quantity of dice we have, and focusing on a few areas is good to get things finished.
Industry
-[] New Model Radiation Suit 2D
-[] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1) 2D
-[] Collapse Radiation Detectors 1D
This is also fine, going harder on Public Confidence here is good considering how cheap things are, we need to start working on Agriculture anyway, and the rest is kind of really expensive and needs dice thrown at it to work out
Services
-[] Introduce Automated Management 3D
-[] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans 1D
Automated Management is too important to let fail turn 1, and Evacuation plans is the only other thing we can get that wont potentially screw us over later
Military
-[] Radiation Exoskeleton 1D
-[] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1) 2D
-[] Military Robotics 1D
Special operation barracks is a somewhat low hanging fruit that is not being taken, but the description itself not being very optmistic so that makes sense , Collapse Radiation Refits give Political support and is just generally a good thing to get early on, Radiaton Exoskeleton is fine for quick utility and taking advantage of radiation suit, but i would like to phase out people and just go for robots for the military considering who we are playing.
Dimensional
-[] Gather Proper Readings 3D
While im the sort of person to go greedy and read the research as well, considering its the only urgent action on the whole update using 3D is fine
Personal
-[] Reconnect
-[] Dice Bonus: Infrastructure
Reconnect is the most likely to give us immediate power and action economy, im fine with this
Separated things a bit to make them easier to look at
A bit of an altered plan below for risk takers and to generate discussion
Still not voting though
Infrastructure 3+7D
-[] Sealed Personnel Transportation 2D
-[] Sealed Power Plants 4D
-Sealed Logistical Transportation
--[] Lorries (Stage 1) 2D
-[] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1) 2D
Industry 3+2D
-[] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1) 4D
-[] Collapse Radiation Detectors 1D
Services 3+1D
-[] Introduce Automated Management 3D
-[] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans 1D
Military 3+1D
-[] Military Robotics 3D
-[] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1) 1D
Dimensional 3D
-[] Gather Proper Readings 2D
-[] Review Existing Records 1D
Personal 1D
-[] Reconnect
-[] Dice Bonus: Infrastructure
Again, probably better to go full in on Proper readings but i like my action economy even if it kills me.
- Location
- The Garden
Infrastructure 3+7D
-[x] Sealed Personnel Transportation 2D
-[x] Sealed Power Plants 4D
-Sealed Logistical Transportation
--[x] Lorries (Stage 1) 2D
-[x] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1) 2D
Industry 3+2D
-[x] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1) 4D
-[x] Collapse Radiation Detectors 1D
Services 3+1D
-[x] Introduce Automated Management 3D
-[x] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans 1D
Military 3+1D
-[x] Military Robotics 3D
-[x] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1) 1D
Dimensional 3D
-[x] Gather Proper Readings 2D
-[x] Review Existing Records 1D
Personal 1D
-[x] Reconnect
-[x] Dice Bonus: Infrastructure
-[x] Sealed Personnel Transportation 2D
-[x] Sealed Power Plants 4D
-Sealed Logistical Transportation
--[x] Lorries (Stage 1) 2D
-[x] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1) 2D
Industry 3+2D
-[x] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1) 4D
-[x] Collapse Radiation Detectors 1D
Services 3+1D
-[x] Introduce Automated Management 3D
-[x] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans 1D
Military 3+1D
-[x] Military Robotics 3D
-[x] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1) 1D
Dimensional 3D
-[x] Gather Proper Readings 2D
-[x] Review Existing Records 1D
Personal 1D
-[x] Reconnect
-[x] Dice Bonus: Infrastructure
- Pronouns
- he
[X] Plan Housing, Radiation and Free Dice
- Location
- Earth
[X] Plan Housing, Radiation and Free Dice
Q1 2025 Results
- Location
- England
Q1 2025 Events
Worldwide > Military > NATO Breakup?
Hand Daddy Shrew (UK)
Been hearing a lot of things from the lads about base, people concerned that the Americans are going to pull out of NATO or some shit. Sounds absurd but it's as near to an apocalypse as we're gonna get.
Xenticles (Japan)
Haven't heard anything like that, but the US troops stationed here last week are all gone now, left all of their equipment behind too. I'll do my best to keep you updated, but whatever this leak is it interferes with satellite communication from the ground, no-one knows how long we'll keep connected for these days.
Bourgeois Sandwich (US)
News is going mad over here, used to be mostly a unified message but these days all of the different channels are saying different things, never seen anything like it before. I can confirm that we aren't doing anything like leaving NATO though, those soldiers were rushed in to a bunch of different Asian countries to provide disaster support, I've heard talk of trying some kind of mass evacuation but the numbers involved are beyond absurd.
United States > Political > The fuck is going on?
throwaway834573247127 (US)
Alright, so I'm not normally one for politics, but even I know the rough gist of it. But what the fuck is going on now? All of the news channels are screeching entirely unique crazy talk, I can't make any sense of what happened to set them off like this. So please, some clarification. For completeness, I'm basically a hermit and haven't looked at any news for months.
Harambae's Harambibbles (US)
Near as much as I can tell Fuckwads A and Fuckwads B have decided that now, of all fucking times, is the right moment to start a pissing match. There have been a bunch of fights in the streets, don't think anyone died in those but I know at least three people have been lynched. Best advice I can give is to go back to your hermit life and wait for this to all blow over, things sparked up like this in '22 as well before it all deflated.
Gryoclockter (US)
Echoing the guy above here, one of the people that got lynched had nothing to do with anything, was just a random bystander that got caught in the crowd. If you have any political opinions, keep them to yourself and nuke your social media. Govt have to do something about this craziness soon, but it seems like every nutter under the sun has taken that radiation leak over in Asia as a sign of the end times and are acting out all of their fucked up fantasies.
Resources: Temporarily Infinite
Political Support: 50(?)
Public Confidence: 55/100
Economic Factors
(Each unit provides for 10,000 people. 1 Sealed Housing keeps 10,000. 1 Sealed Agriculture feeds 10,000)
Sealed Housing: 0
Sealed Agriculture: 0
Decontaminated Water: 0
Sealed Power: 0
Sealed Industry: 0
Radiation Suits: 0 +5
Infrastructure
[] Sealed Housing (Stage 1)
Begin designing and testing the structures that are going to be new new home for humanity for the foreseeable future, they must be proof against Collapse Radiation for decades with minimal maintenance while remaining comfortable enough not to drive their inhabitants insane. As soon as your designs are finished they will be submitted to the Emergency Council for massive crash construction.
(207/300 +10 Public Confidence)
Work on the sealed housing went incredibly quickly and your team was just going over the final touches when the away team sent back the final reports from the radiation investigation teams. All it took was a single simulation using the new data to show a catastrophic failure in containment after seven months to send most of the work back into the editors. The contact you had with the construction team demanded you hand over the substandard designs anyway, so that they could be seen working on something. Understandably, they were incredibly concerned at the optics of not being seen working on the problem. At least they know better than to mark these shelters as actually safe, so they are mostly just doing PR work until the new design is actually finished.
[] Sealed Power Plants
The technology maintaining the radiological seal on the new housing requires 24/7 power, even an outage for just a few hours will begin to let radiation seep in. A new model of Nuclear Reactor, much smaller, but both easier to operate and faster to build must be designed. These new reactors can be emplaced locally to sealed housing to ensure constant power throughput.
(176/300)
Considering how intensively normal nuclear reactors were studied, redesigned and scrutinised, it felt somewhat ironic to have the bulk of your work on the new plant design be cutting safety features rather than adding them. Frankly, it doesn't really matter if these reactors have a minor leakage in five or ten years, it can't make the radiation problem any worse. Accordingly, most of your effort goes to cutting down the time it takes to construct.
[] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1)
The water supply is yet another vector through which Collapse Radiation can find it's way into the human body, new designs of processing plants must be created to properly filter out the radiation. Large modifications will need to be made to the plants to filter out the contaminant.
(119/100 +5 Public Confidence)
The first round of emergency refit designs are revealed with much ado from the public. The fact that was quietly hushed up was it was only capable of handling the current mildly irradiated water, as while the main cloud would take several years to reach Europe, water flows can move much faster and very small amounts of Collapse Radiation was beginning to show up globally. Still, it made the people feel much better to know that they no longer have to risk if the water they are drinking is liquid death.
With the easy task out of the way, a significantly more difficult one takes it's place. The new measurements taken by the away team could only penetrate the edge of the radiation cloud, but the levels of Collapse Radiation are significantly above what was expected. Even the most optimistic simulations of new density are far worse than those previously made, new dedicated plants need to be designed to be capable of producing clean water from completely irradiated fluid.
Industry
[] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1)
No-one knows if Collapse Radiation will render the land entirely barren, but any food grown in the presence of the stuff will be equally inedible by humans, perfectly sealed facilities need to be created that can supply the similarly sealed housing. Designing facilities capable of growing the bare minimum essentials for human life is just as important as housing.
(98/200 +15 Public Confidence)
In a case reminiscent of the sealed housing problem, the previously finished designs for the agricultural facilities were woefully inadequate for actually dealing with actual Collapse Radiation, necessitating yet another redesign. As with the housing, mock construction springs up across Europe, putting up completely useless and empty buildings so they can be seen doing something.
[] New Model Radiation Suit
Older model radiation suits are merely effective at lowering the dosage of radiation that the user is exposed to, this is nowhere near enough for Collapse Radiation, these new suits must also be comfortable to wear for extended stretches of time, including... waste processing systems. The bulk of these designs makes them unwieldy to the extreme and tiring to operate.
(197/100 +5 Public Confidence)
This project benefited immensely from the data on Collapse Radiation and as with the others the finished design was completely useless, but redesigning it was not a monumentally difficult task. In look it could be compared to the mutant child of a Hazmat Suit and a mixture of the local ESA Space Suit combined with Space Suit designs requested from NASA. Said hybridisation was incredibly helpful for the project, since space suits already need to shield the wearer from cosmic rays and for some reason they had notes on a project to combine the suits. The majority of the changes made were cutting costs wherever possible to make the hybrid suit cheaper and adjusting the materials to better resist Collapse Radiation. (+5 Radiation Suit units per turn)
[] Collapse Radiation Detectors
Even the smallest amounts of Collapse Radiation can be deadly. Newer, better detectors of this kind of radiation need to be put into production, for both your own use and to find their way into the hands of the public.
(104/50 +5 Public Confidence)
Once again, the mission to Asia brings incredibly important information for more precise detection of Collapse Radiation. New models of cheaply made CFR detectors are handed out to your factory contact, who sends you a box of fine teas as personal thanks. You might be slightly thankful for the gift if you didn't know he was dirty as sin and it was probably funded with orphans tears. You find an appropriately rich idiot and fob it off on him before donating the rest to anonymously buying all of the kids in the nearest school ice cream. Let them enjoy life while they can.
You know exactly where children sit on the list of people who would receive space in the shelters.
Services
[] Introduce Automated Management
Ordinarily, humans don't like being managed by a computer and told what to do. Personally, you don't mind it all that much, and this is far too important of a task to let silly things like human mistakes cost humanity time. Every second lost guarantees countless lives death.
(122/100 +1 Free Dice -5 Political Support)
To anyone with the slightest knowledge of automation, the number of useless administrators truly was astounding. What was previously a job that required hundreds or even thousands of workers could be simply and efficiently automated and run from a central machine. When you first examined your new organisation you found it positively teeming with useless busywork creating even more useless bureaucrats. Cutting out the slow, inefficient and clumsy humans from processes wherever possible drastically increases the effectiveness of the organisation as a whole.
You are happy with the increased performance, but this is only the start, in preparation for the world after you know you need to go much, much further.
[] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans
It is going to be required to move massive quantities of people as the radiation cloud begins to encroach upon the borders of the Union. People will feel a lot more reassured that the Government has a plan to get them out of the way, regardless of how useful that actually is.
(68/150 +20 Public Confidence)
A faint memory of a conversation you'd had with a colleague from Germany sent you digging through old Cold War evacuation plans, what you found was frankly depressing. You could make something better yourself with a day and a simulation, you did make something better yourself with a day and a simulation. But it was nowhere near good enough for what you knew would be a truly titanic flood of people.
Military
[] Radiation Exoskeleton
A variant of the New Model Radiation Suit that has a passive Exoskeleton to help balance and distribute the load of the suit. Significantly easier to move about in as the exoskeleton takes a great deal of the burden off of the user. Too expensive to issue to the general populace, but perfect for specialised or military usage.
(59/50) (Must be taken with or after New Model Radiation Suit) (Allows for Operations in Collapse Radiation)
The modification you made for the military was both cutting edge and incredibly depressing. Militaries worldwide had just begun seriously dabbling with wearable exoskeletons, so the fact that you managed to put one together in a few weeks and a couple of calls to a robotics researcher you knew was just sad. Still, it provided the performance that was needed right now, allowing soldiers to survive within Collapse Radiation, provided that their suit remained sealed. Considering their job was to get shot at, it was something of a glaring problem to you.
[] Military Robotics
Any kind of combat inside Collapse Radiation is insanely perilous for human operators. A sharp edge or a single bullet will compromise their suit and spell certain death for them. You know just the thing. Robots do not tire, they do not bleed and they do not care about Collapse Radiation.
(92/200)
The presence of robots in the military had been steadily climbing over the past decade or so, but it was still very much in the experimental stage. You'd seen the current prototypes on offer and were note impressed, you could do better. Unfortunately most of the work done this quarter was preparatory, sketching up the designs of the different models, but between the rest of your duties you didn't have the time to do more.
[] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1)
Refit the NBC equipment already present in military vehicles, bases and bunkers to be capable of standing up to Collapse Radiation.
(76/50 +5 Political Support)
(26/100 +5 Political Support)
This was the only time where the substandard models designed before the away team data didn't have to be bludgeoned out of your hands. The revised filters were quickly put into production, the military had a vast amount of mismatching equipment with mismatching standards that all needed to be brought up to scratch. The prompt delivery of this and the militarised radiation suit certainly won you a lot of friends amongst the military, even though the nagging from base commanders grew even louder afterwards.
Dimensional
[] Gather Proper Readings
At the moment, plans are being based around a theoretical knowledge of Collapse Fluid and extremely brief observations by individual researchers. This has left teams making assumptions on how Collapse Radiation functions and spreads.
(241/100) (Urgent) (Unlocks World Map)
The mission out to get proper recordings of Collapse Radiation was apparently incredibly eventful, it all of the best and worst ways. They got the measurements alright and during your next meeting with the council you had to deliver the bad news, your previous estimates were off by nearly a year. The cloud would begin encroaching on the borders of the Union by 2028 at the latest.
Arguably of just as much import were the... encounters the team had while studying.
The recording starts fairly simply, a few scientists sitting around in their vehicles while they fly off their drones to go take measurements and recordings, where things start going strange is when one of the rear cameras of an APC catches a soldier getting out the back for something. He only moves a short distance away from the vehicle before stumbling over his feet, or so that is what he claims, because through the recording bright as day you can see the large form of some hideous creature stalking amongst the camp.
Source: Anthony Francisco
Somehow none of the thirty or so people seem to notice the three meter tall abomination slowly moving amongst them, not even the soldier that had bumped against it's thick leg and stumbled. As the thing stalks through the camp, it eventually comes across a researcher hunched over his drone controls, hidden from view from the rest of the camp by the side of the APC he was leaning against. The camera feed jumps to a different angle as it moves, allowing you to see the other, much bigger horrible abomination looming over the camp, what passes for eyes locked firmly onto the now clearly lesser creature.
Source: Jungle Minion - Guild Wars 2
The bigger one very carefully leans over the camp and snatches up the smaller in it's giant maw. The slight gust of displaced air that ruffles the researchers hair is the only evidence that touches a human, as everyone else in the camp continues to be completely oblivious to the scene playing out above them, the larger creature slowly moving away as it chews on it's victim. The rest of the video is a series of short clips where the same giant creature is spotted off in the distance at multiple different sites, some hundreds of miles apart, seemingly following the team around and using them as bait for the lesser creatures that flock towards them.
This entire ordeal was only discovered when one of the guards started looking through his vehicles recordings so he could find an image of a view he wanted to frame, but the knowledge has deeply shaken every member of the expedition and some of them have taken to looking through a camera at all times.
The council room was very, very quiet after you played the footage back to them.
Personal
[] Reconnect
Now that you have time, try to reconnect to all of your contacts. Find out who made it safely back home or not.
(Enables Recruitment of Specialists)
It was deeply depressing to scroll through your list of contacts and slowly remove them as you received confirmation of their deaths, many of them were attending scientific meetings or had projects set up in Asia but never managed to make it out in time. You suspect a much larger chunk of your contacts were also dead, but for now you had no news on them at all, and it wasn't that unusual for some of them to not reply for months on end. It was good to talk to some of your colleagues again, just to see that they were still alive. Most of them were alright, in moderation.
You decided that you wanted to recruit:
[] Infrastructure MIA
[] Industry MIA
[] Services MIA
[] Military
[] Dimensional MIA
You rolled a 97 for Interdimensional Creature events this turn.
I also rolled to see if anyone was available from your contacts, your luck is just that bad.
Order from bottom to top, rolz pushes the result down when you roll.
Worldwide > Military > NATO Breakup?
Hand Daddy Shrew (UK)
Been hearing a lot of things from the lads about base, people concerned that the Americans are going to pull out of NATO or some shit. Sounds absurd but it's as near to an apocalypse as we're gonna get.
Xenticles (Japan)
Haven't heard anything like that, but the US troops stationed here last week are all gone now, left all of their equipment behind too. I'll do my best to keep you updated, but whatever this leak is it interferes with satellite communication from the ground, no-one knows how long we'll keep connected for these days.
Bourgeois Sandwich (US)
News is going mad over here, used to be mostly a unified message but these days all of the different channels are saying different things, never seen anything like it before. I can confirm that we aren't doing anything like leaving NATO though, those soldiers were rushed in to a bunch of different Asian countries to provide disaster support, I've heard talk of trying some kind of mass evacuation but the numbers involved are beyond absurd.
United States > Political > The fuck is going on?
throwaway834573247127 (US)
Alright, so I'm not normally one for politics, but even I know the rough gist of it. But what the fuck is going on now? All of the news channels are screeching entirely unique crazy talk, I can't make any sense of what happened to set them off like this. So please, some clarification. For completeness, I'm basically a hermit and haven't looked at any news for months.
Harambae's Harambibbles (US)
Near as much as I can tell Fuckwads A and Fuckwads B have decided that now, of all fucking times, is the right moment to start a pissing match. There have been a bunch of fights in the streets, don't think anyone died in those but I know at least three people have been lynched. Best advice I can give is to go back to your hermit life and wait for this to all blow over, things sparked up like this in '22 as well before it all deflated.
Gryoclockter (US)
Echoing the guy above here, one of the people that got lynched had nothing to do with anything, was just a random bystander that got caught in the crowd. If you have any political opinions, keep them to yourself and nuke your social media. Govt have to do something about this craziness soon, but it seems like every nutter under the sun has taken that radiation leak over in Asia as a sign of the end times and are acting out all of their fucked up fantasies.
Resources: Temporarily Infinite
Political Support: 50(?)
Public Confidence: 55/100
Economic Factors
(Each unit provides for 10,000 people. 1 Sealed Housing keeps 10,000. 1 Sealed Agriculture feeds 10,000)
Sealed Housing: 0
Sealed Agriculture: 0
Decontaminated Water: 0
Sealed Power: 0
Sealed Industry: 0
Radiation Suits: 0 +5
Infrastructure
[] Sealed Housing (Stage 1)
Begin designing and testing the structures that are going to be new new home for humanity for the foreseeable future, they must be proof against Collapse Radiation for decades with minimal maintenance while remaining comfortable enough not to drive their inhabitants insane. As soon as your designs are finished they will be submitted to the Emergency Council for massive crash construction.
(207/300 +10 Public Confidence)
Work on the sealed housing went incredibly quickly and your team was just going over the final touches when the away team sent back the final reports from the radiation investigation teams. All it took was a single simulation using the new data to show a catastrophic failure in containment after seven months to send most of the work back into the editors. The contact you had with the construction team demanded you hand over the substandard designs anyway, so that they could be seen working on something. Understandably, they were incredibly concerned at the optics of not being seen working on the problem. At least they know better than to mark these shelters as actually safe, so they are mostly just doing PR work until the new design is actually finished.
[] Sealed Power Plants
The technology maintaining the radiological seal on the new housing requires 24/7 power, even an outage for just a few hours will begin to let radiation seep in. A new model of Nuclear Reactor, much smaller, but both easier to operate and faster to build must be designed. These new reactors can be emplaced locally to sealed housing to ensure constant power throughput.
(176/300)
Considering how intensively normal nuclear reactors were studied, redesigned and scrutinised, it felt somewhat ironic to have the bulk of your work on the new plant design be cutting safety features rather than adding them. Frankly, it doesn't really matter if these reactors have a minor leakage in five or ten years, it can't make the radiation problem any worse. Accordingly, most of your effort goes to cutting down the time it takes to construct.
[] Water Decontamination Plants (Stage 1)
The water supply is yet another vector through which Collapse Radiation can find it's way into the human body, new designs of processing plants must be created to properly filter out the radiation. Large modifications will need to be made to the plants to filter out the contaminant.
(119/100 +5 Public Confidence)
The first round of emergency refit designs are revealed with much ado from the public. The fact that was quietly hushed up was it was only capable of handling the current mildly irradiated water, as while the main cloud would take several years to reach Europe, water flows can move much faster and very small amounts of Collapse Radiation was beginning to show up globally. Still, it made the people feel much better to know that they no longer have to risk if the water they are drinking is liquid death.
With the easy task out of the way, a significantly more difficult one takes it's place. The new measurements taken by the away team could only penetrate the edge of the radiation cloud, but the levels of Collapse Radiation are significantly above what was expected. Even the most optimistic simulations of new density are far worse than those previously made, new dedicated plants need to be designed to be capable of producing clean water from completely irradiated fluid.
Industry
[] Sealed Agriculture Facilities (Stage 1)
No-one knows if Collapse Radiation will render the land entirely barren, but any food grown in the presence of the stuff will be equally inedible by humans, perfectly sealed facilities need to be created that can supply the similarly sealed housing. Designing facilities capable of growing the bare minimum essentials for human life is just as important as housing.
(98/200 +15 Public Confidence)
In a case reminiscent of the sealed housing problem, the previously finished designs for the agricultural facilities were woefully inadequate for actually dealing with actual Collapse Radiation, necessitating yet another redesign. As with the housing, mock construction springs up across Europe, putting up completely useless and empty buildings so they can be seen doing something.
[] New Model Radiation Suit
Older model radiation suits are merely effective at lowering the dosage of radiation that the user is exposed to, this is nowhere near enough for Collapse Radiation, these new suits must also be comfortable to wear for extended stretches of time, including... waste processing systems. The bulk of these designs makes them unwieldy to the extreme and tiring to operate.
(197/100 +5 Public Confidence)
This project benefited immensely from the data on Collapse Radiation and as with the others the finished design was completely useless, but redesigning it was not a monumentally difficult task. In look it could be compared to the mutant child of a Hazmat Suit and a mixture of the local ESA Space Suit combined with Space Suit designs requested from NASA. Said hybridisation was incredibly helpful for the project, since space suits already need to shield the wearer from cosmic rays and for some reason they had notes on a project to combine the suits. The majority of the changes made were cutting costs wherever possible to make the hybrid suit cheaper and adjusting the materials to better resist Collapse Radiation. (+5 Radiation Suit units per turn)
[] Collapse Radiation Detectors
Even the smallest amounts of Collapse Radiation can be deadly. Newer, better detectors of this kind of radiation need to be put into production, for both your own use and to find their way into the hands of the public.
(104/50 +5 Public Confidence)
Once again, the mission to Asia brings incredibly important information for more precise detection of Collapse Radiation. New models of cheaply made CFR detectors are handed out to your factory contact, who sends you a box of fine teas as personal thanks. You might be slightly thankful for the gift if you didn't know he was dirty as sin and it was probably funded with orphans tears. You find an appropriately rich idiot and fob it off on him before donating the rest to anonymously buying all of the kids in the nearest school ice cream. Let them enjoy life while they can.
You know exactly where children sit on the list of people who would receive space in the shelters.
Services
[] Introduce Automated Management
Ordinarily, humans don't like being managed by a computer and told what to do. Personally, you don't mind it all that much, and this is far too important of a task to let silly things like human mistakes cost humanity time. Every second lost guarantees countless lives death.
(122/100 +1 Free Dice -5 Political Support)
To anyone with the slightest knowledge of automation, the number of useless administrators truly was astounding. What was previously a job that required hundreds or even thousands of workers could be simply and efficiently automated and run from a central machine. When you first examined your new organisation you found it positively teeming with useless busywork creating even more useless bureaucrats. Cutting out the slow, inefficient and clumsy humans from processes wherever possible drastically increases the effectiveness of the organisation as a whole.
You are happy with the increased performance, but this is only the start, in preparation for the world after you know you need to go much, much further.
[] Establish Massive Scale Evacuation Plans
It is going to be required to move massive quantities of people as the radiation cloud begins to encroach upon the borders of the Union. People will feel a lot more reassured that the Government has a plan to get them out of the way, regardless of how useful that actually is.
(68/150 +20 Public Confidence)
A faint memory of a conversation you'd had with a colleague from Germany sent you digging through old Cold War evacuation plans, what you found was frankly depressing. You could make something better yourself with a day and a simulation, you did make something better yourself with a day and a simulation. But it was nowhere near good enough for what you knew would be a truly titanic flood of people.
Military
[] Radiation Exoskeleton
A variant of the New Model Radiation Suit that has a passive Exoskeleton to help balance and distribute the load of the suit. Significantly easier to move about in as the exoskeleton takes a great deal of the burden off of the user. Too expensive to issue to the general populace, but perfect for specialised or military usage.
(59/50) (Must be taken with or after New Model Radiation Suit) (Allows for Operations in Collapse Radiation)
The modification you made for the military was both cutting edge and incredibly depressing. Militaries worldwide had just begun seriously dabbling with wearable exoskeletons, so the fact that you managed to put one together in a few weeks and a couple of calls to a robotics researcher you knew was just sad. Still, it provided the performance that was needed right now, allowing soldiers to survive within Collapse Radiation, provided that their suit remained sealed. Considering their job was to get shot at, it was something of a glaring problem to you.
[] Military Robotics
Any kind of combat inside Collapse Radiation is insanely perilous for human operators. A sharp edge or a single bullet will compromise their suit and spell certain death for them. You know just the thing. Robots do not tire, they do not bleed and they do not care about Collapse Radiation.
(92/200)
The presence of robots in the military had been steadily climbing over the past decade or so, but it was still very much in the experimental stage. You'd seen the current prototypes on offer and were note impressed, you could do better. Unfortunately most of the work done this quarter was preparatory, sketching up the designs of the different models, but between the rest of your duties you didn't have the time to do more.
[] Collapse Radiation Refits (Stage 1)
Refit the NBC equipment already present in military vehicles, bases and bunkers to be capable of standing up to Collapse Radiation.
(76/50 +5 Political Support)
(26/100 +5 Political Support)
This was the only time where the substandard models designed before the away team data didn't have to be bludgeoned out of your hands. The revised filters were quickly put into production, the military had a vast amount of mismatching equipment with mismatching standards that all needed to be brought up to scratch. The prompt delivery of this and the militarised radiation suit certainly won you a lot of friends amongst the military, even though the nagging from base commanders grew even louder afterwards.
Dimensional
[] Gather Proper Readings
At the moment, plans are being based around a theoretical knowledge of Collapse Fluid and extremely brief observations by individual researchers. This has left teams making assumptions on how Collapse Radiation functions and spreads.
(241/100) (Urgent) (Unlocks World Map)
The mission out to get proper recordings of Collapse Radiation was apparently incredibly eventful, it all of the best and worst ways. They got the measurements alright and during your next meeting with the council you had to deliver the bad news, your previous estimates were off by nearly a year. The cloud would begin encroaching on the borders of the Union by 2028 at the latest.
Arguably of just as much import were the... encounters the team had while studying.
The recording starts fairly simply, a few scientists sitting around in their vehicles while they fly off their drones to go take measurements and recordings, where things start going strange is when one of the rear cameras of an APC catches a soldier getting out the back for something. He only moves a short distance away from the vehicle before stumbling over his feet, or so that is what he claims, because through the recording bright as day you can see the large form of some hideous creature stalking amongst the camp.
Source: Anthony Francisco
Somehow none of the thirty or so people seem to notice the three meter tall abomination slowly moving amongst them, not even the soldier that had bumped against it's thick leg and stumbled. As the thing stalks through the camp, it eventually comes across a researcher hunched over his drone controls, hidden from view from the rest of the camp by the side of the APC he was leaning against. The camera feed jumps to a different angle as it moves, allowing you to see the other, much bigger horrible abomination looming over the camp, what passes for eyes locked firmly onto the now clearly lesser creature.
Source: Jungle Minion - Guild Wars 2
The bigger one very carefully leans over the camp and snatches up the smaller in it's giant maw. The slight gust of displaced air that ruffles the researchers hair is the only evidence that touches a human, as everyone else in the camp continues to be completely oblivious to the scene playing out above them, the larger creature slowly moving away as it chews on it's victim. The rest of the video is a series of short clips where the same giant creature is spotted off in the distance at multiple different sites, some hundreds of miles apart, seemingly following the team around and using them as bait for the lesser creatures that flock towards them.
This entire ordeal was only discovered when one of the guards started looking through his vehicles recordings so he could find an image of a view he wanted to frame, but the knowledge has deeply shaken every member of the expedition and some of them have taken to looking through a camera at all times.
The council room was very, very quiet after you played the footage back to them.
Personal
[] Reconnect
Now that you have time, try to reconnect to all of your contacts. Find out who made it safely back home or not.
(Enables Recruitment of Specialists)
It was deeply depressing to scroll through your list of contacts and slowly remove them as you received confirmation of their deaths, many of them were attending scientific meetings or had projects set up in Asia but never managed to make it out in time. You suspect a much larger chunk of your contacts were also dead, but for now you had no news on them at all, and it wasn't that unusual for some of them to not reply for months on end. It was good to talk to some of your colleagues again, just to see that they were still alive. Most of them were alright, in moderation.
You decided that you wanted to recruit:
[] Military
You rolled a 97 for Interdimensional Creature events this turn.
I also rolled to see if anyone was available from your contacts, your luck is just that bad.
Order from bottom to top, rolz pushes the result down when you roll.
Last edited:
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
This could have been a lot worse. I think. God refugees are going to be facing hell. We're moving towards being able to operate in their zones so we miiight be able to flush out some of the mutant things by meeting them earlier on.
Getting Dolls seems like it'll be very useful, they are theoretically human intelligence in robot bodies and can be saved for back up data. Well, they were in canon...and after a lot of development. Still! We've got their creator. Probably? I don't know if Persica was responsible for Dolls in general, the T-Doll program or if she just headlined making the AR-Team.
We spotted the IC's way sooner then we likely should have which is awesome.
So cautiously optimistic.
Getting Dolls seems like it'll be very useful, they are theoretically human intelligence in robot bodies and can be saved for back up data. Well, they were in canon...and after a lot of development. Still! We've got their creator. Probably? I don't know if Persica was responsible for Dolls in general, the T-Doll program or if she just headlined making the AR-Team.
We spotted the IC's way sooner then we likely should have which is awesome.
So cautiously optimistic.
- Location
- Canada
Rukia forgot to add this in.
You can only pick up one specialist per year
So per 4 turns
If you pick this option again next year I'll roll on the missing people to see if they turn up, if they don't then you'll have to take an action to search for a replacement
So China is just gone, we rolled terribly on the power plants and the housing.
[X] Military
You can only pick up one specialist per year
So per 4 turns
If you pick this option again next year I'll roll on the missing people to see if they turn up, if they don't then you'll have to take an action to search for a replacement
So China is just gone, we rolled terribly on the power plants and the housing.
[X] Military
AegisCollector
Full of Inappropriate Glee
- Location
- North East USA
This looks super interesting!
Keep on Keeping on QM!
Keep on Keeping on QM!