The Solomani plague

[kafka47]

Real life shows us that diseases developed in separate habitats (in casu Old World and New World) can be of significantly different number and virulence. The Amerindians got several virulent diseases from Europe; the Europeans got one, and there's even a theory that syphilis didn't come from the New World at all. So I don't see anything unlikely about Earth having developed more and worse diseases than any of the Ancients' terrariums had.


Hans

Agreed Hans. And, I think that the Vilani were wise quite wise in worlds that had a fecund of micro-organisms (i.e. unfriendly bacteria) and humaniti, they simply quarantined and did not allow the cultures to advance past TL 3.

Indeed, syphilis did not come from the New World - not that the new world was sterile but just cut off as you rightly said.

However, I do suspect something more sinister about the Plague of Duskir - perhaps, it was a tactic to weaken Vilani resolve and superiority. Kindly, Medicins sans Frontiers fanning through the Stars like missionaries would do more to win over the hearts of lower order Vilani castes than orbital bombardment especially if indeed the transmission of the virus was through the food - thus breaking up the Vilani social order with Shugaii (sp) being replaced with a new caste - the medic. For we think that there are hundreds of ways of doing medicine but if only one caste has the healing properties (like in the case of Chinese traditional herbal medicine) - the authority of the Shugaii replaced with something equally scientific but different would have shattered the Caste system along with the reforms of promoting free market capitalism.

 

[rancke]

However, I do suspect something more sinister about the Plague of Duskir - perhaps, it was a tactic to weaken Vilani resolve and superiority.

That's certainly a conclusion any conspiracy theorist would jump to at the drop of a hat, but without corroberating evidence it's just an unsupported allegation.

There's no reason to invoke sinister black ops to explain these plagues; invading troops are not likely to observe proper quarantine procedures.

One must also consider that you can't use such tactics against people with sophisticated bureaucratic traditions without it being blindingly obvious, as the survivors would be able to trace outbreaks back to mysterious index cases and realize that it is down to biological warfare from offworld. I think there could be a coldly pragmatic reason not to employ such weapons, as it might well turn a fight to resist being subjugated into a fight not to have Earth stelilized down to the bedrock.

All this is not to say that a future Traveller writer won't ignore everything that has been said on the subject and introduce such shenanigans retroactively. But for the nonce the canonical truth is that the Terrans didn't do it (on purpose).


Hans

 

[McPerth]

Real life shows us that diseases developed in separate habitats (in casu Old World and New World) can be of significantly different number and virulence. The Amerindians got several virulent diseases from Europe; the Europeans got one, and there's even a theory that syphilis didn't come from the New World at all. So I don't see anything unlikely about Earth having developed more and worse diseases than any of the Ancients' terrariums had.

One major diference among the diseases the Amerindians received and the one the Europeans received is the transmission way. As most the diseases Europe exported were airborne transmited, and so had the potential of explosive outbreaks, a sexual transmited one will be quite slower to transmit, and explosive outbreaks are more difficult.

 

[Dragoner]

Assumptions and logic can be argued about. Opinions one must simply agree or disagree with. I disagree with this particular opinion of yours.


Hans

The logic in using TL0 people as an example for TL11 people, is non-existant, make of it what you will, but it does not make sense.

 

[rancke]

The logic in using TL0 people as an example for TL11 people, is non-existant, make of it what you will, but it does not make sense.

That's probably why I'm not doing that.


Hans

 

[Dragoner]

That's probably why I'm not doing that.


Hans

What?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

And what are de sources for IW :devil:?

I would like to point out the Solomani of the Third Imperium are a [bold]FAR DIFFERENT[/bold] culture than the Terrans of the Terran Confederation. During the time of the IW, the Terrans lack the secretiveness and racial purity issues the Solomani are obsessed with. From a metagame point of view, while the history of GURPS: Interstellar Wars is written with a pro-Terran spin, it is written much more objectively and milder than say DGP's Solomani and Aslan.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

"Terran physicians fought a fierce battle against the plagues on Nusku, and also traveled deep into Imperial territory to help deal with disease outbreaks there. Vaccines and anti-viral therapies were mass-produced and shipped everywhere, saving millions if not billions of Vilani lives. This work was critical in winning the respect of Vilani populations – but the plagues had already presented the Vilani ruling class with yet another reason to deal decisively with the Terran challenge." GURPS: Interstellar Wars p.60-61

 

[warwizard]

What is the minimum group size for enough genetic diversity for long term survival?

Lets look at the assumptions implicit in that question.

That a variation on genetics is needed so that no one pathogen kills 100% of the population.

The longer you need to survive the more likely a disease will target your population so as the time is extended you need more genetic variety.

And that you will be in an ecology wherin you will have a multitude of possiable diseases that your population will encounter.

Ok Ancients grab a group, they do this many times, (60+ seperate collections)

If you completly seperate the subjects from their ecosystem, maintain the colony in antiseptic conditions, how much of the genetic diversity is required argument just went out the window?

As we look at this, some theroies appear...

The Valani are a monoculture with only a few family lines establishing their population. Granted there are other humanati family lines from the other ancient sites where the Terran servants survived. Each world is a farm plot with genetically identical corn. The plagues from contact with the Terrans... would spread through such a population attaining perhaps 95% infection rates. Population codes could drop by a factor of 2 or 3 when only 1 person in 100, or 1 person in 1000 survives, there is nothing left of society. Countering this is the constant rate of mutation that all terrestial genes undergo.

(When the Valani first visited the moon and contacted the Droyne colony on the moon, the bio war tailored viruses that had been seeded on the wrong bodies took effect and caused a dieback of the Valani population such that they did not again attain orbit for a very very long time. The Valani had enough time since the final war to mutate and pass the mutated genes around such that the tailored virus was no longer 100% fatal. The Droyne colony did not fare as well, from a lower population base, they did not have enough survivors to maintain life support, and were wiped out.)

The Valani know of such diseases and the danger they present, it's been 11 or 12 thousand years since that incident. There would perhaps be records on Vland... and some procedures burried deep in a manual stored in a research facility, that nobody has accessed in 800 years.

The Vland population had at least two major dieback events. (final war, and 280k years later the activation of the final war bio attack) Each such event would have the effect of siginificantly reducing the genetic diversity of the survivors, there can be little doubt that the Vland population had very little genetic diversity when they invented jump drive 10,000 years ago and started colonizing other worlds. (Each world forces the populations on it to evolve to better cope with the conditions encountered)

 

[Nathan Brazil]

There is the alleged genetic bottleneck caused by the Toba volcanic eruption around 70,000 years ago. The theory suggests that humans of the current day are descended from 3,000 to 10,000 individuals who survived the volcanic winter and cooling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

 

[Carlobrand]

The logic in using TL0 people as an example for TL11 people, is non-existant, make of it what you will, but it does not make sense.

Neither do sandcasters.

Nonetheless, canon gives us a Vilani culture originating from a planet in which the transplanted human population managed to adapt the local flora and fauna to their nutritional needs only with considerable effort, had little worry about disease (until they started encountering other humans on other worlds), developed a starkly conservative culture and a medical science weak on infectious diseases, and ran into a plague that played out along lines roughly similar to that TL0 example, though not as severely.

What canon does not give us is sufficient detail about the biochemistry of local Vland lifeforms and the resources available to early Vilani from which to judge how likely or unlikely that scenario is.

In other words, we just don't know enough about the food sources or the methods used to render them useful. We do know, from your own mention of zoo planets with local life either derived from or very similar to Terran life, and from McPerth's citation about the Vilani struggle with offworld diseases encountered through contact with other human cultures, that the Vilani had encountered and struggled with infectious agents from other worlds in the past - just not to the same degree of virulence.

Note the "roughly" in my remark above. To the extent that it represents a disruption in the normal operations of a society, a plague is a plague is a plague; the only question is just how disruptive the plague is going to be. The diseases sweeping Native American native populations resulted in near-depopulation of the American continents, with the loss of perhaps 80% of the population across the two American continents. By contrast, the 1918 flu pandemic infected between a quarter and a third of the world's population and killed about 10-20% of those infected; deadly and disruptive, but society managed to continue. Vilani medical science might be limited with regard to infectious disease, but something as basic as the availability of fever reducing medications and bottled oxygen can dramatically increase survivability. However, impairment of even 10-20% of their population would have had at least a corresponding impact on their ability to prosecute a war, even if the percentage who actually died was kept low by medical intervention.

 

[Dragoner]

Neither do sandcasters.

No, because "starship combat" is in the realm of bong hits and black light posters, while Epidemiology is a hard science. By the same logic being used against the Vilani, would hold true for the US today in regards to diseases coming out of the developing world such as Africa, because our immunity to those diseases is lower, and lower than it was generations ago. What happened? Basic practices help to contain them, not to mention things like sanitation, and good nutrition; nothing really "high tech". Things in which the Vilani would match the Solomani on, and as much they might be a disease vector for the Solomani, as the other way around. Traveller was supposed to use real world science when possible, it makes a mockery of trav to use some fabrication of how diseases fell them the same as the indigenous Americans; not to mention that isn't the whole of the story that happened, otherwise there wouldn't be Mexicans. So it is basically Traveller taking an embarrasing couple of blows right there, in both the science and history departments.

 

[McPerth]

No, because "starship combat" is in the realm of bong hits and black light posters, while Epidemiology is a hard science.

True, epidemiology is a hard science (or nearly so, as most sciences based on projections), but even now, with all the medical experience, drus and immunities we have, the appearence of a new highly infectious, airborne transmited virus as a new flu may well disrupt the society, even if it has low lethality.

A pandemic with such a virus could put out of comisión about 10-20% of the workforce at once for about a week or several, even if ony 1/10000 of those infected die, and that is all what the Terrans needed to occupy a planet, even if deaths were very few (i nfact, the less the better, if they could appear as the saviors of the people with their higher medical skill and TL).

Vilani had little experience with infectious diseases, and so, as much as their TL could be in other fields, they could well be unable to react, while their consevadorism and adversion to research would only play in favor of the diseases (and the Terrans per extensión).

 

[Dragoner]

True, epidemiology is a hard science (or nearly so, as most sciences based on projections), but even now, with all the medical experience, drus and immunities we have, the appearence of a new highly infectious, airborne transmited virus as a new flu may well disrupt the society, even if it has low lethality.

Which is exactly the logic against the idea of a solomani plague, plus it seems a big stretch to say their society would collapse if 10-20% caught the flu, ours wouldn't today. We aren't more resistant to the bubonic plague or cholera, in fact probably less, we just have better sanitation procedures.

 

[rancke]

True, epidemiology is a hard science (or nearly so, as most sciences based on projections), but even now, with all the medical experience, drus and immunities we have, the appearence of a new highly infectious, airborne transmited virus as a new flu may well disrupt the society, even if it has low lethality.

And in a virgin field epidemic high lethality is quite likely.

A pandemic with such a virus could put out of comisión about 10-20% of the workforce at once for about a week or several, even if ony 1/10000 of those infected die, and that is all what the Terrans needed to occupy a planet, even if deaths were very few (i nfact, the less the better, if they could appear as the saviors of the people with their higher medical skill and TL).

The Spanish Flu infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—3 to 5 percent of the Earth's population at the time.

Vilani had little experience with infectious diseases, and so, as much as their TL could be in other fields, they could well be unable to react, while their consevadorism and adversion to research would only play in favor of the diseases (and the Terrans per extensión).

I'm quite sure the Vilani would have developed procedures for handling infectious diseases. But as I pointed out before, invading troops are apt to break a few quarantine regulations when they invade.

Incidentally, it looks to me like you and Dragoner are arguing past each other. You're arguing about how effective biological warfare would be against the Vilani while he is arguing that the canonical description of the plagues on the Vilani are nonsensical (While I'm arguing that such attacks didn't take place and that the canonical version is perfectly reasonable).


Hans

 

[McPerth]

Which is exactly the logic against the idea of a solomani plague, plus it seems a big stretch to say their society would collapse if 10-20% caught the flu, ours wouldn't today.

Many sociologists would disagree with you here, but I won't press the issue for risk of becoming political discussion.

We aren't more resistant to the bubonic plague or cholera, in fact probably less, we just have better sanitation procedures.

Aside from better sanitation, we have vaccines and drugs to fight those diseases (something probably not had by the Vilani, as someone said here they didn't even know about ADN) and we're better fed (and so have better defenses) that the people who endured the various plagues in the past (as the Vilani would probably be too, I concede in this point).

 

[Dragoner]

Aside from better sanitation, we have vaccines and drugs to fight those diseases (something probably not had by the Vilani, as someone said here they didn't even know about ADN).

ADN? Does it say the Vilani do not have antibiotics? Many times a fever is fought with simple aspirin. Much of this is way too big of a stretch of the suspenders of disbelief.

 

[McPerth]

ADN? Does it say the Vilani do not have antibiotics? Many times a fever is fought with simple aspirin. Much of this is way too big of a stretch of the suspenders of disbelief.

Antibiotics were discovered quite by chance from a fungus, something not available to the Vilani, so I find believable for them not to have any.

 

[rancke]

ADN? Does it say the Vilani do not have antibiotics? Many times a fever is fought with simple aspirin. Much of this is way too big of a stretch of the suspenders of disbelief.

Antibiotics don't work against viruses. Aspirin was available during the Spanish Flu, but it still killed 3-5% of Earth's population. Far from being too big a stretch of belief suspenders it is no stretch at all.


Hans

 

[Dragoner]

Antibiotics were discovered quite by chance from a fungus, something not available to the Vilani, so I find believable for them not to have any.

Why would they not have fungi?

Aspirin was available during the Spanish Flu, but it still killed 3-5% of Earth's population. Far from being too big a stretch of belief suspenders it is no stretch at all.


Hans

Except we did not collapse due to the Spanish Flu, which if you believe the Vilani did, it is contrary to the historical evidence, and that is the stretch you are believing in.