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Exsurgent Quarantine Procedures

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Wed, 2014-07-30 07:36

Mortex

Exsurgent Quarantine Procedures

Long time lurker here but I think this is my first time posting. The latest session of my campaign saw the sentinels head to the Luna surface in a hunt for Armstrong's gold (http://eclipsephase.com/armstrongs-gold). They stumbled into an exsurgent pocket, a single shifter, an ex-member of a radical offshoot of the Steel Liberators who had been transformed by an exsurgent nanoplague that only effects synthetics. The Sentinels killed off the shifter but not before venturing into it's lair and exposing themselves and their equipment to the nanoplague. All the sentinels are sleeved in biomorphs and where wearing smart vac suits. They've contacted a firewall proxy and briefed them on the situation. I'm looking for some advice on what to do next. Although I know it's a variant that only affects synthetics there is no way for the sentinels or firewall to know this right now, plus give the virus' ability to mutate it could become a threat even if it's not at the moment. What sort of quarantine procedures are Firewall going to want to carry out after this kind of exposure?

I assume that their vac suits and weaponry is now carrying at least some nanites that they could take back to a habitat. Is there a way to safely scrub this stuff or does it all need to be destroyed?
Can you be certain the morph's are clean? Should they be destroyed and the ego resleeved (this is going to be a bitter pill for some PCs to swallow)
I get the impression that if they try to enter a Luna habitat in this state the security checkpoint they have to pass through will detect the exsurgent nanites and just kill them and they'll have to rely on their backup insurance. Luna 'paranoia'
And lastly can you tell exsurgent nanites from regular nanites? And if not how do you know if you're clean…?

Wed, 2014-07-30 08:59

Decimator

They might be able to know

They might be able to know they're safe if a psychosurgeon takes a good hard look at their egos. Since they have no way of knowing the nanoplague only infects synths, they should destroy every piece of equipment they carried in there with extreme prejudice, including their morphs, along with the site itself. A nuke is [i]not[/i] overkill in this situation. Of course, being biomorphs, there's no way to get their egos out without exposing a healing vat to the nanoplague, or ripping their cortical stacks out and exposing other equipment to the plague. Given the LLA's justifiable paranoia, the Firewall proxy can probably tip off one of his contacts and arrange an orbital nuclear strike, while the PCs are still onsite. "Stay there. I'm sending help."

Wed, 2014-07-30 09:33

Mortex

Decimator wrote:Of course,

Decimator wrote:
Of course, being biomorphs, there's no way to get their egos out without exposing a healing vat to the nanoplague, or ripping their cortical stacks out and exposing other equipment to the plague.

That is an excellent and terrifying point. They also managed to recover Armstrong's Gold but that's been exposed as well.

Wed, 2014-07-30 10:21

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

nuke it from orbit is not

nuke it from orbit is not understatement however there are cleverer ways to deal with nanites. Thermobaric detonation. Baking at 1,000 Fahrenheit, EMP discharge. it may take a few hives but guardian swarms

Wed, 2014-07-30 11:06

Mortex

So if the sentinels go into

So if the sentinels go into an airtight environment (decontamination chamber) , I could cook them (Baking at 1,000 Fahrenheit, unlikely to survive) or repeatedly bombard them with EMP discharge (probably bad for the biological nervous system). Or introduce guardian swarms to 'clean the' effected surfaces, perhaps providing enough time to attach an ego bridge and get a backup before resorting to the cooking plan. Requires some thought. The EMP discharge does at least offer a way to clean Armstrong's Gold. I'd expect a negligible effect on it.

Wed, 2014-07-30 15:31

uwtartarus uwtartarus's picture

Luna security doesn't

Luna security doesn't differentiate between exsurgent nanites and others. Any active nanoswarms are purged with extreme prejudice. If Firewall thinks they are infected, they'd nuke them or at least blow them to smithereens, since their stack gets corrupted if the ego is corrupted, so stacking them or using an Ego bridge would be too risky. You can extract egos without a healing vat, that's what Ego Bridges (described as bread boxes that open like a flower and cradle the skull while MRI+Nanomachines scan and digitize the ego data), but in the aforementioned situation, the Ego Bridge could get contaminated, so Firewall is going to nuke them. Bonus points if they use Decimator's suggestion: "Stay there. I'm sending help."

—

Exhuman, and Humanitarian.

Thu, 2014-07-31 15:18

Shunka

Decimator wrote:They might be

Decimator wrote:
They might be able to know they're safe if a psychosurgeon takes a good hard look at their egos.

This would expose the psychosurgeon's equipment and potentially the psychosurgeon to the plague. It wouldn't be impossible (or in my opinion, even unlikely) for the exsurgent virus to write a bassy-hack into someone's digitized ego in such a fashion that even loading a non-running chunk of the ego could infect someone viewing/studying it, unless they get lucky and load/examine small enough chunks that the hack gets broken into harmless fragments. But the equipment would still be exposed. The appropriate response is quarantine by overkill. Burn out the affected (and potentially affected) tissue and reduce any equipment that came in contact with it to its component atoms. FW can come up with an excuse for why there was a nuclear detonation later. Probably involving a bunch of suspected terrorists trying to smuggle a nuclear trigger and failing it in the most catastrophic fashion.

Thu, 2014-07-31 15:31

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

a martian tereforming charge

a martian tereforming charge went missing obviously. now as long as your pc's name is not victor catchet it will work out :) but it is possible to study the virus in an isolated quarintine. you would just have fail safes to be activated when the virus finally breaks down the security. I recommend a good watch of the original Andromeda Strain. The place is probably a bit big though for most firewall operated labs though