The true nature of the recycling tanks

[Nwabudike]

Probably everyone here noticed this ages ago, but I only started playing SMAC about a month ago, and I'm a bit slow at picking up on subtleties.

I had a moment of fridge logic a little while ago after completing the game and noticing that one of the options for Deirdre's book suggested that the recycling tanks also incorporated human waste.

Okay, I thought, I guess that makes sense. It could be used as fertilizer, and this would help explain how the tanks can increase nutrients and energy, rather than just minerals.

It was only when I started my next game and built the first rectank that it hit me:

It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.

This always seemed like an odd quote, both because you'd expect someone like Deirdre to be the one who provides the quote for the recycling tanks and because of the way it's worded. But I figured that this was just Yang's poetic way of saying that every citizen must contribute to the greater society in every way he can, right down to making sure things he has no more use for don't go to waste. Which I guess is technically right in a sense, because let's look at that quote again:

It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with the people.

[s]Soylent green[/s] Hive nectar is people!

(Technically, they may just be used as a resource and not food specifically. Details.)

In retrospect, the fact that you get recycling tanks as a result of biogenetics research probably should have tipped me off. Anyway, has anyone more perceptive than I picked up on any other implicit/understated setting elements like this?

Edit: No strikethrough on these boards, I take it. Oh well, you get what I meant.

P.S. This question doesn't seem like it warrants its own thread. The manual states that sensor arrays cover a 2-tile radius. Does this mean that they cover everything that's up to 2 tiles away from them, including diagonals (i.e. a square of 5*5 tiles)? Or is word radius meant to imply that the shape of the area they cover is more "circular", like that of a base (i.e. a square of 5*5 tiles, minus the corners)? Or am I misinterpreting this statement entirely, and sensor arrays are included within the aforementioned 2-tile radius (i.e. they cover a square of 3*3 tiles)?

[the_rest]

Yes I guess when some elderly citizen dies from a heart attack - watching horror movies with mind worms, he gets recycled in the recycle tanks. So then he becomes one with all the (other) people, cause they eat The Green Product made of old farts.

[RGE]

A Sensor Array covers a 5x5 area, which you can see if you use the fog of war on the map.

Regarding the Recycling Tanks I once started a (now old) thread about those after reading a certain news story.

One other thing that my thoughts keep returning to is how Lady Deirdre Skye's quote for The Citizens' Defense Force is about mind worms. Despite the fact that the Perimeter Defenses from that secret project do not protect against mind worms at all.

[rod87]

Another interesting quote is Morgan's about Research Hospitals. I can't remember it exactly, but it's something about some workers getting into one of those facilities and being horrified about what's going on in there.

And also, although not so subtle, Miriam's quote on the Bulk Matter Transmitter. It's one of those that make you think.

[BlackCat]

Edit: No strikethrough on these boards, I take it. Oh well, you get what I meant.

strike works fine

[kittenOFchaos]

Another interesting quote is Morgan's about Research Hospitals. I can't remember it exactly, but it's something about some workers getting into one of those facilities and being horrified about what's going on in there.

Some civilian workers got in among the research patients today and became so hysterical I felt compelled to have them nerve stapled. The consequence, of course, will be another public relations nightmare, but I was severely shaken by the extent of their revulsion towards a project so vital to our survival.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Personal Diaries

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri

[rod87]

Of all the employments, working in the brood pit was at once the most horrific and the most desirable. Horrific for what we saw occur day after day, and because of the very nature of the sessile native lifeforms. Desirable, because having been chosen to work in the pit, you were highly unlikely to be one of its victims.

Captain Ulrik Svensgaard "The Shadow Resonance"

[GooglyBoogly]

In regards to the Punishment Sphere Facility:

It is not uncommon to see patients undergo permanent psychological trauma in the presence of the Sphere, before the nerve stapler has even been strapped into position. Its effect on the general consciousness of the culture is profound: husbands have seen wives go inside, and mothers their children. Dr. Xynan left the surface of the sphere semitranslucent for a reason. You can hear them in there; you can see them. It is a thing of terrible beauty.

* Baron Klim, "The Music of the Spheres"

Whenever you capture a the leader of another faction you can see and hear them imprisoned in a punishment sphere of some sort. The male and female characters even have different screams.

Also, Mind Machine Interface notes:

The Warrior's bland acronym, MMI, obscures the true horror of
this monstrosity. Its inventors promise a new era of genius, but
meanwhile unscrupulous power brokers use its forcible installation
to violate the sanctity of unwilling human minds. They are
creating their own private army of demons.

-- Commissioner Pravin Lal,
"Report on Human Rights"

Implies that the technology was used to conscript armies.

[Matt the Czar]

I always thought that the Tanks made you into Former spray

[MegaTurtleRex]

There's a scene in Waterworld where they drop an old body I think into a sludge thing, they later try and drop the main dude into it too; moment I read the description of the tanks I thought of that scene.