Not to troll, but when I saw the title of this thread I couldn't help laughing at the idea of it sounding like a condom ad. Reading the post made me see you had a damn solid idea here that deserves respect and consideration. So this is basically an undercover sting operation, I mean in a way like leaving a 'bait care' out for car thieves, essentially, while running hidden cameras. As to faking a TITAN relic, not too hard, I'd say, for firewall to pull off. Hell, they still run missions to earth, remember? The first thing we saw in EP was a mission to earth. ("Lack".) So they could get solid data on TITAN stuff to set up a fake. As far as effects, if a hypercorp was exposed as trying to exploit TITAN tech for profit without regard for safety, it's stocks, reps and maybe even it's property are going to take MF level hits. Even with good spin that sort of shit is going to be WORSE than getting evidence a modern corporation was working with neonazis who were trying to bring back the third reich. Seriously, a company messing with TITAN tech is going to have most transhumans out for blood. Sure some freaks like the exhumans and the ultimates may see this as a step towards survival and making themselves stronger, but they are going to be a tiny and mighty unpopular minority, like modern nazi types are today. I think FW would try to have at least one man on the inside of the organization being set up for the sting op as a control to observe how the agency in question handled the relic. He might have a killswitch for it in case things got out of hand. A funny idea occurred to me involving a firewall team pulling this but not knowing there is a real titan relic nearby and discovering that the mark they were watching knew about their sting and grabbed the real relic, thinking it was the fake, to embarrass firewall.

The only thing people know for sure about TITAN technology is that it does not operate according to the laws of science as we know them. That makes all simulation highly speculative and likely misleading. When the real thing comes, it might as well spread along vectors that you previously considered physically impossible, and that your simulation could not possibly recreate or anticipate. Of course, that little caveat might not be enough to prevent Firewall from trying. Maybe make it a high-tech equivalent of a modern trojan. It makes the subverted individual send some kind of subtle but definite acknowledgement to somewhere Firewall would notice. Not sure how exactly that would work in 10 AF.

It that must not be named wrote:

A really nasty option might be for FW to leave a real firewall artifact in the path of someone they know will misuse it in hopes it destroys them as a warning to others.

That one doesn't ring true to me. Firewall is a secret conspiracy, with very limited resources, and no shortage of x-risks that demand their attention. It doesn't seem probable that they would risk exposure, and risk giving up valuable and potentially dangerous technology to their adversaries, just to intimidate the people who aren't supposed to know about them in the first place. Now, making a false TITAN relic out of a conventional fusion or antimatter explosive device with a QE trigger, and leaving it for the nosy investigators to find... : )

Trekkin wrote:

And I, in turn, don't know if a simple bomb really serves as an effective test of anti-TITAN countermeasures. Certainly it's a fine trap, but all you're testing is everyone's resistance to pain. More to the point, how big a bomb a setup can hold is calculable given relatively easy-to-access data. Infection is harder to test without empirically testing it, even with something that isn't nearly as virulent as an actual TITAN. It weeds out the really unprepared people while, if correctly designed, highlighting the path the TITAN canister took from when Firewall let go of it to when they heard from it.

Oh no, a bomb is completely worthless as a way to test TITAN infection vectors. I meant that as a response to the suggestion that Firewall might arrange for their foes to destroy themselves with Firewall artefact technology, as a method of intimidation. I meant to say that a conventional bomb is a much better, more economical, less risky way to intimidate adversaries and tie up loose ends, as opposed to using secret Firewall technology (if such a thing exists). I think tests of the kind you describe are viable, provided they use the actual Exsurgent virus, and not a Transhuman virus proxy, as was previously suggested. It should be possible to develop some kind of containment procedure, if not necessarily a treatment or vaccine. The reason why I don't think a Transhuman virus would work as a proxy in this kind of test is because of the unpredictable knowledge of TITAN technology. It routinely does things that Transhuman science believes are impossible, so measures devised against conventional or even highly sophisticated viruses are probably not going to be effective against the Exurgent virus. And of course, if the TITANs return, after 10+ years of post-singularity technological development, then all bets are off. If they want to infect Transhumanity with something nasty, we could scarcely guess how they might do it, much less how we could stop them. You might as well rub your Cortical Stack with garlic oil, and hope that the smell scares them off.