| From: | Erik Jameson <erikj@****.COM> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: pollution |
| Date: | Fri, 15 May 1998 13:30:02 -0400 |
>Due to fires in Mexico the air quality this week in Austin is the worst its
>been in 30 years (if your stuck down in San Antonio I feel for you).
>Anyway taking a deep breath outside in 205X seattle is discribed as causing
>burning lungs and watery eyes. At least with smoke (I'm not sure about
>auto exhasut) by the time this point is reached the pollution is thick
>enough that a clear day looks like deep clouds and visibility is impared on
>the ground (all of austin looks sort of like the smoke you encounter a
>couple blocks away from a big building fire). Basically I was thinking
>that the visibility impact of pollution in shadowrun is greatly understated.
Smoke tends to "haze" the air much more than most other pollutants I think.
I live in LA, where smog is a way of life. Pollution can be very bad.
What you get is that you can see pretty well, not like what's going on in
the Gulf States right now. What you do see is an ugly brownish,
yellow-tinged layer that sits over the city that you can see from the
mountains or driving from one of the Valley's into the LA Basin. With all
the El Nino rain it's been pretty good air quality though.
The biggest problem from all that pollution, even down in Texas, isn't the
visibility difficulties. It's the fact that it becomes damn hard to breath.
I don't have bad lungs. But I've grown up in LA, so I've been breathing
the air for 24 of my 25 years. So on those really bad smog days in the
summer, I know I can't do any physical activity, because if I do, I'll end
up gasping for air and feeling nausea and light-headed. And it's not
because I'm out of shape, it's because that damn smog is in my lungs.
So in a place like 205X Seattle or LA, there shouldn't be a major
visibility factor due to pollution. But I think there would be some
significant problems that might arise when a team of shadowrunners is
trying to run away, on foot, from Lone Star of corpsec or something. That
decker or mage without the air filters are going to suddenly drop from
taking in too many particulates.
Erik J.
"Forgive me FASA for I have sinned. It has been 6 days since I last played
Shadowrun and 15 days since I last bought a SRTCG booster pack."
