Setting: Best way to create anarchy on Earth?

[Dauntless]

ADGBoss-
I too try to work backwards from the game world I want, and then think back recursively find out what happened between the future and now to explain what happened.

However, I'm having difficulty figuring out what sort of massive trauma inflicted on all of Earth's society could serve my needs.  As I pointed out in the response to Ron, I've already figured out some basic elements of where I want the setting to be.  The current game world will take place sometime between 2080-2100, and will focus on a transhuman/extopian setting with a luke-warm war going on between several various factions (so more dark than the cold-war extension of the Pacific War that is happening in SJGames Transhuman for example).

I also don't do some of the radical elements that typifies transhuman stories.  For example, there are no brain uploading and therefore no immortality (I personally think that due to quantum constructs within our neurons called microtubules, that we'll never be able to perfectly copy our memories, and thanks to Chaos theory, the tiniest element which is askew can lead to dramatically different results....hence, no memory mapping).  On the other hand, I have Zero-point energy power which in turn allows for reactionless drives (zero-point energy is a phenomena that quantum theory has successfully predicted that says there's no such thing as a perfect vacuum, there's always energy somewhere....and theoretically, there's an infinite amount of it...this energy is what some physicists think causes inertia).  

I like to think of the setting as a mix between Morrow Project, Transhuman, and Dune.

[Dauntless]

Economic Collapse, Descent into Facism, and World War III
As the primary pillar of our economy now is financing, two factors together could completely collapse the U.S. economy. First OPEC nations move from tying oil prices to the dollar and tie it to the Euro instead. Second China and maybe a couple of other nations stop buying U.S. bonds to fund the deficit and start trying to sell the debt instead. This creates a rush on selling the dollar, the U.S. government goes bankrupt, interest rates soar, inflation moves to devastating levels, jobs are cut, and families who now are at the highest debt levels in american history start losing everything they have. This sends shockwaves throughout the world economy, creating geopolitical chaos. In the middle of this, the U.S. still has more military power than the rest of the world combined and a population that has been trending over the past decades toward patriotism, glorification of the military, and villification of political dissent. How are they going to stabilize their economy and try to reclaim the standard of living to which they believe they are entitled from those nations that destroyed their economy by pulling out of the dollar? Also, how do the people in power make sure that those under them stand behind them instead of blaming them for the collapse (research the Reichstag Fire)?

I thought of something almost exactly like this, including a large swing in favor of the religious right that starts trying to legislate laws in favor of Christian morality in stead of secular morality.

However, such a setting would I think, be very unpopular with many players simply because it would essentially make America the bad guy.  On the one hand, I really could care less if people hated me for writing something like that or not.  However, one of the goals of my games is to make people question things and to open their minds.  If I make things too blatantly offensive right off the bat, then I won't even have a chance to jam my foot in the door before they close it.

[M. J. Young]

I've got three thoughts; I'm not sure they haven't been mentioned, but my impression is that they aren't being serious considered.

[*]Twelve Monkeys did a post-apocalyptic based on the release of a devastating virus. Such a plague need not be as devastating as that movie held, and it need not be man-made (I was reading today that we're anticipating a particularly deadly Avian Influenza in the next season). Something like that could be very quickly destabilizing. Because of the nature of human immunity, though, it would swiftly pass (as the majority of the population would develop antibodies, and thereafter it would become a much feared potential childhood disease but not likely to be deadly again without seriously mutating).[*]Graeme Comyn is running a Multiverser world that is somewhat post-apocalyptic. He suggested that terrorists detonated suitcase bombs in several major U.S. cities, destabilizing the U.S. and its partners sufficiently that China simply moved in and claimed the place; Japan did the same with greatly destabilized Canada (Comyn is Canadian and British). The collapse of so much of American industry led to serious economic depression, with incredibly blatant class divisions as those in power attempted to hold on to some semblence of comfort and those among the conquered slid into abject poverty and disease.[*]Our Second Book of Worlds includes the post-apocalyptic without the apocalypse, The Industrial Complex. The core concept is that automation completely replaced all manufacturing and service jobs, and society's adaptation to the severe unemployment was to shift to a system whereby everything was provided free for the asking. Consequently, no one bothered to learn or do anything, and society decayed into very primitive levels. This would take several generations minimum, so it probably wouldn't fit your time frame.[/list:u]Anyway, those thoughts might spark some ideas.

--M. J. Young

[kenjib]

Good point about politics.  That means you can't really make it about terrorism, wars of aggression, or current events at all or you are bound to offend someone pretty quickly.  So you are left with external forces intervening and interrupting the status quo, which gives you an abstract "bad guy".  There are already several great suggestions such as a virulent pathogen outbreak, disruption from global warming, or a near-mass extinction level meteorite impact.  You could even have a combination of several.  Other candidates for dangerously disruptive technologies would be things like cloning, prohibitively expensive anti-aging drugs, AI-exceeding human intelligence, prosthetic enhancement, molecular assemblers, and Bill Joy's and Eric Drexler's famous "grey goo" scenario.

However, if ethical issues surrounding technology are going to be one of the key components of this setting, perhaps the issue should come from technology:  People destroyed themselves through their own technology.  One approach I can think of would be to look at the "hot button" technological developments of today and decide to push one of them.  This, as background, will get people instantly into the mindset of questioning issues of the moral and ethical boundaries of science.

Maybe you could examine, first, what kind of technological issues you are actually interested in exploring.  It's a huge subject and seems central to your setting vision but it's not really defined.  Each different type of technological scenario you bring to bear can bring up different themes.  You mention trans-humanism many times - is that they key issue you want to explore?  What makes us human?  If so, consider making an issue of humanity the cause of the collapse -- who's fault was it (according to whom)?  On the other hand, are you really interested in something else and trans-humanism is just a bit of color background?

Technology in fiction is often there as a metaphor for trends in our current society.  The reader travels into the fantastic of the future, experiences a transcendent experience in an altered state, and then returns back to the real world when done reading, bringing something of the sublime back with him into the real world when done.  These new things help to shape human consciousness and our sense of the boundaries of what is possible.  What are the ethical and moral issues in your future world that you envision people grappling with?  What kinds of technologies can bring those issues to crisis?  What does the crisis in the past say about the crisis in the present?  It seems like the crisis in the past, effectively, establishes a premise for your game.  What is this premise?

[kenjib]

By the way, here is a pretty influential essay that might be of interest if you haven't read it already:

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html

[Bifi]

There's also an increasingly popular post-aopcalyptic German RPG called Degenesis that tackles directly those issues your want to target. There is an English section of the forums at http://www.degenesis.de/html_forum.html.

M

[zephyr_cirrus]

I think that a better worldwide dilemma would be the events of Michael Chricton's book "Prey".  Basically, nanorobots equiped with computer programs that essentially allow them to learn escape into the wilderness of the desert, and evolve massive swarms of microscopic particles that learn how to suffocate people, make them trip and fall, and end up looking like humans as well.  They also have a corrosive ability that lets them destroy the memory chips in electronic devices (however, this wouldn't turn off electricity - just computers).  However, by the same token, they can be electrocuted to death (because their made out of metal).  

Also, they reproduced through E-Coli bacteria.  So, they'd kill an organism, infect its corpse with E-Coli bacteria, and use the bacteria to produce more nanobots.  Its a very interesting book to read even if you decide not to use it.

[Vaxalon]

The thing that makes people revert to their basest natures quickest is hunger.  If the global food supply goes poof, you're looking at riots in the streets in every affected city within days.

[ScottM]

I also have a few books-- hopefully, this isn't turning too poll like as a thread.

a) Nancy Kress's Beggar's trilogy: Beggars in Spain (& sequels).  Basically, an elite created by genetic engineering patents essentially free energy, radically altering the relation of nations and their citizens.

b)  `Warday', by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka. It's a novel about, roughly, the effects upon the United States of a limited nuclear war in 1988, in the form of a travelogue written by two writers touring the country five years later... The key is that the war is very limited, very few cities go poof.  However, the relations of nations, famine and mutated viruses mangle the working order of the world.

c) Day of the Triffids has two ideas... but only one's really necessary.  Blind almost everyone (they do it with a "light show" in the heavens that everyone watches that fries their eyes).  Suddenly, the few who can still see are vastly important; strange social schemes are reintroduced (like feudalism, with eyesight equating to "nobility").

Just a few quick thoughts.  Hope they're useful.
--Scott

[lev_lafayette]

There is quite a list here already and I'd say people who have responded have a very good idea of "plausible collapse". The technological singularity between AI and human intelligence, the prospect of environmental catasrophe, rogue states and rogue superpowers, rogue asteriods, collapse of the financial system and, that time honoured favourite, the return of the Big Sky Daddy.

Now apart from the last one (keeping in mind that a major Xian religion predicted the end of the world incorrectly three times in the 1920s... Let's think of the predicted disasters c1875... and what had happened by 1975...

Push the assumptions to places where they would prefer not to go. Take all of the above suggestions (with perhaps the exception of the Second Coming) and combine them, and multiply their effects.

Have fun!

[John Kim]

I think the asteroid or comet is one of your best bets given your goals.  The key is for it to strike unequally on the globe, thus creating a shift in the global balance of power.  For example, two options would be (1) an Atlantic-centered strike which essentially wipes out the Eastern U.S. and much of Western Europe; or (2) a North-American strike which essentially takes out all of the continental U.S.  There would also be a huge global effect as well.  A few decades later, this makes China, India, and Russia the world superpowers.  This will be a radical restructuring from the view of American or European players.  It will also have a major cultural and political implications.  

Super-pathogens could also have a restructuring effect, especially depending on whom and where it strikes.  It could affect different racial or economic groups, as well as striking in different places.

The EMP or terrorist destruction of markets doesn't seem like it would have that much of a restructuring by comparison.  The global economy would be set back, but superpowers would still be superpowers, and the Third World would still be the Third World.

[contracycle]

What if... we heard a Voice.

This is essentially a riff on the venerable conspiracy trope that the MIB's are covering it all up because "the public would panic".  In this scenario, the cover-up fails and the public really does panic.

The scenario here is something like this: all of a sudden, a clear and unabmigiously alien signal is detected.  It does not expect answers - it merely talks.  What exactly does it have to say?

The decipherability and precise content of the message - and whether or not it is purposefully directed at us - can be worked up later.  The central idea is to trigger the not-quite-barbarism of the nbew social order, a re-settling of the status quo as this central question changes priorities.

--

Or, perhaps, the Rise of the East.  If China and India achieve positions in the global order commensurate to their size and populations, the world will be a very different place.  Some of this has been echoed in Cyberpunk but they have seldom gone the whole way and eliminated western hegemony completely.  This may entailo a few short clashes, perhaps the odd bit of gunboat diplomacy, but you could probably engineer a new global order without requiring any major wars.

[kenjib]

Heh.  The Day the Earth Stood Still RPG.

[Mike Holmes]

A virulent disease strikes that attacks people with Y chromosomes, killing almost all of them. It's a classic.

Mike

[Joe J Prince]

Aliens.

Its gotta be aliens.