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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

From: "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Chicago. In the walls.
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 03:31:03 +0100
>>>>>[Long and sometimes painful personal experience of samurai, Ronin,
which you've just confirmed. You use the right tool for the job. You
might have the best, sharpest, deadliest scalpel ever built: not much
use for driving nails, though. One of those "fuck yous", when someone
gives you an order, will get two or three of your squad killed because
you're mouthing off when you should be moving.

Pesticides? Most of the effective insecticides are organophosphorous-
based cholinesterase inhibitors. The short version of that mouthful is
"nerve gas". Since most of the bugs are indoors or underground, a
powerful and highly persistent agent would be necessary to reach them
before it dissipated. Every surface exposed to that agent would be
lethal to the touch - for man, beast or bug - for months thereafter.

Watcher bombardment? Please. You think these things haven't been
studied, even tried? The UCAS armed forces can muster a few dozen
magicians too, Ronin. Watchers - small, weak, stupid - can be summoned
at a remarkable rate. Most magicians can only control three or four,
though. Sent into the Zone, they disappear, snack food for the bugs.
They don't, apparently can't, understand the concept of massing for an
attack: they attack individually and are destroyed individually.

As for recruiting an army based on idealism and pride... Tell me how
many magicians you need, how many samurai, how many mercenaries, to
clear two hundred square miles of insect spirit-infested urban
wasteland. Tens of thousands, Ronin. Are there that many shadowrunners?
There are perhaps a few hundred in Seattle, a hundred in Denver... no
more than two thousand in all of North America. Motivate them to fight
for months, if not more. Persuade them to stay while friends die
horribly. Watch the corporations grow fat on the ammo sales while they
sit back and laugh at you.

Idealism is fine and noble. Over forty of us gathered to destroy a
corporate nuclear stockpile that posed an unacceptable threat to world
stablity, to no profit and at our own expense. But you would do well to
ensure that you understand what you are fighting against, and that what
you ask for is possible, before you begin rallying troops to your
standard.

Again I say, Ronin, study history. I gave you three cities before as
examples: the next three are Beirut, Sarajevo and Groznyy. I suggest you
study what happened to each, fighting against human foes who could be
persuaded to flee or surrender.]<<<<<
-- Lynch <08:24:41/06-29-57>

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