The Resettlement Becon (RAR!)

[Zor]

As i have not made a thread on these lines in way to long...

It is one ordinary day about a week when you are doing something unusually routine and unremarkable, when something very odd happens to you. Before your eyes emerges a small metallic disc about 25 centimeters long and 5 centimeters high marked with a big red button floating infront of you. A hologram then starts to come up showing you its avatar (A anthropomorphic T-Rex in a buissiness suit and Fedora) which proceeds to tell you what it is.

The device is a hyperspacial transmitter equiped with adaptive camoflauge sent here by the government of a large and advanced extraterrestrial nation, which has monitered the planet (hence why they made the avatar as it is) and had given you this device so you have the ability to prevent a possible disaster and improve your world. The transmitter is keyed to your fingerprints and only you can press it. If you try to take it apart, a tiny explosive charge inside it will detonate and destroy all its systems.

Should you choose to press the button, the following things will happen. First of all, a large quanity Nanites shall be delivered into Earth's Atmosphere, these nanites will, in the course of an hours, render the entire planet's population uncontious (no one will die because from this). Then, a series of drones will scour the planet's surface and study the mind of everyone on the planet. They will collect every person on the planet who falls under the following criteria.

1-Is part of an Abramhamatic Faith (Judaism, Islam and Christianity)
2-Is over 18 Terran Years old
3-Beleives that Genesis is word for word how the world started

And brought aboard a fleet of transport vessels and moved. They will then be relocated to a specially designed Reserve planet. The planet is earthlike in climate, having been terrafromed with an ecosystem imported from earth. The planet has two continents, one slightly larger than the other. The bigger one will be populated by Christian and Jewish fundies, while the smaller one goes to the muslims and people will be clustered together roughly by nationality (with displaced sections for European Islamists and Jews living in the middle east ands such on the continents) and Religion for jews. The people will be put into small comunities (5,000-30,000) with houses, food stores stocked with several years worth of tinned food, a coal powered machine shop capable of producing 19th century farm equipment and such (as well as basic electronics (1920's radios and such) in the bigger settlements), a temple to the faith of it's residence, farm equipment, fully stocked libaries, wind power stations to provide power, Lightbulbs and radios and surrounded by farmland with stocks of cows, pigs (on the christian continent, mind you) and other livestock in pens and some nice horses and notes stating what has happened to them. Basically, they will be left there to their own devices afterwards.

The rest of the Population shall be left alone. They wake up, with a message informing them what happened, pointing out in praticular that Christians AND Muslim and Jewish Fundamentalists have been sucked up as well. However they assure you that they acted alone and will not mention you. Aftewards, the device will stop working (save for the self destruct) and will be usefull as a paperweight or discus.

So do you press the button?

Zor

[K. A. Pital]

Possible new converts and the effect of "Rapture" lies spread through the population could negate the positive effect from removing all believers.

Not to mention that such a relocation would be cruel to a great part of the populace, unlike re-education or social integration and law enforcement so that they cannot opress others, which are better options

Personally, me and my fiancee, for example, would care little since I'm an atheist and she's a deist, but imagine how many families would be broken up if such a thing happened! Would this suffering be worth the positive effect?

I imagine if they were informed of who did it, I will not live to see the next day if I pressed the button. If they will not be informed, well... it's still very cruel.

The safe idea is good, if there will be a major war in the Middle East which could be preventable, I could technically use the device. Armies house many fundies, so do some governments. Perhaps the positive effect from stopping a war would be greater than the negative effects of fundy evaporation. But this is not certain.

[Junghalli]

Nope, I wouldn't do it. There is something to be said for removing all the fundie nutcases from the planet, but I find this solution rather extreme.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Removing almost half of America population, including most of the upper echelons of its government and a vast number of its vital farmers, will cause mass panic, a breakdown of infrastructure, anarchy, starvation, and other repugnant things.

The loss of the vast majority of people in the Middle East and the Mexican Gulf will effectively halt oil production for an indeterminate time, causing yet greater violence, chaos, and social breakdown in the wake of this disaster.

Since America is ruined, China and India will be propelled to the status of superpower with ease (India will gain extra morale after a short mop-up taking over Pakistan and Bangladesh and re-integrating them). Both of these countries would do far worse as superpowers than America.

Causing a tragedy of proportions this epic would be a crime against humanity and it would take a truly monstrous sociopath, or a completely dogmatic, radical fool to press the button.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Also, this would synch up nicely with Rapture theology. Expect millions of new radical dominionists after the button is pushed.

[DarthShady]

The button shall be pushed! :lol:

Causing a tragedy of proportions this epic would be a crime against humanity and it would take a truly monstrous sociopath, or a completely dogmatic, radical fool to press the button.

You've got a point there.Only somebody truly evil could brake up so many families and cause so much suffering.

[General Zod]

Removing almost half of America population, including most of the upper echelons of its government and a vast number of its vital farmers, will cause mass panic, a breakdown of infrastructure, anarchy, starvation, and other repugnant things.

The loss of the vast majority of people in the Middle East and the Mexican Gulf will effectively halt oil production for an indeterminate time, causing yet greater violence, chaos, and social breakdown in the wake of this disaster.

Since America is ruined, China and India will be propelled to the status of superpower with ease (India will gain extra morale after a short mop-up taking over Pakistan and Bangladesh and re-integrating them). Both of these countries would do far worse as superpowers than America.

Causing a tragedy of proportions this epic would be a crime against humanity and it would take a truly monstrous sociopath, or a completely dogmatic, radical fool to press the button.

I'm suspicious about how tragic it actually is. Very few people believe the Bible or Genesis word per word, so without meeting the third condition I'd suspect the number would be much lower. That said, I'd hit it.

Also, am I the only one who read the thread title as "Bacon", not "Beacon"? Or in Zorism, "Becon".

[General Zod]

Removing almost half of America population, including most of the upper echelons of its government and a vast number of its vital farmers, will cause mass panic, a breakdown of infrastructure, anarchy, starvation, and other repugnant things.

The loss of the vast majority of people in the Middle East and the Mexican Gulf will effectively halt oil production for an indeterminate time, causing yet greater violence, chaos, and social breakdown in the wake of this disaster.

Since America is ruined, China and India will be propelled to the status of superpower with ease (India will gain extra morale after a short mop-up taking over Pakistan and Bangladesh and re-integrating them). Both of these countries would do far worse as superpowers than America.

Causing a tragedy of proportions this epic would be a crime against humanity and it would take a truly monstrous sociopath, or a completely dogmatic, radical fool to press the button.

I'm suspicious about how tragic it actually is. Very few people believe the Bible or Genesis word per word, so without meeting the third condition I'd suspect the number would be much lower. That said, I'd hit it.

Ghetto Edit: To clarify, most people will believe the Bible is somewhat true, or mostly true, or a metaphor for shit, but don't necessarily believe every word is 100% correct except for the really hardcore fundies.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Removing almost half of America population, including most of the upper echelons of its government and a vast number of its vital farmers, will cause mass panic, a breakdown of infrastructure, anarchy, starvation, and other repugnant things.

The loss of the vast majority of people in the Middle East and the Mexican Gulf will effectively halt oil production for an indeterminate time, causing yet greater violence, chaos, and social breakdown in the wake of this disaster.

Since America is ruined, China and India will be propelled to the status of superpower with ease (India will gain extra morale after a short mop-up taking over Pakistan and Bangladesh and re-integrating them). Both of these countries would do far worse as superpowers than America.

Causing a tragedy of proportions this epic would be a crime against humanity and it would take a truly monstrous sociopath, or a completely dogmatic, radical fool to press the button.

I'm suspicious about how tragic it actually is. Very few people believe the Bible or Genesis word per word, so without meeting the third condition I'd suspect the number would be much lower. That said, I'd hit it.

Ghetto Edit: To clarify, most people will believe the Bible is somewhat true, or mostly true, or a metaphor for shit, but don't necessarily believe every word is 100% correct except for the really hardcore fundies.

That's what Stas and others were talking about; the moderate believers left behind are likely to accept the whisking-away of fundamentalists as the fulfillment of whatever "allegory" the Rapture story pointed to, which would persuade many of them to move closer to fundamentalism.

I'm with Stas on this one; if the chips are down and it looks like every worst-case scenario concerning religious warmongering is coming true, I would risk an unstable earth with a giant power vacuum instead of certain WMD-powered annihilation.

[Adrian Laguna]

Forget about what will happen when the moderates see a rapture like effect, the thought of removing millions of children from their parents makes me queasy.

[Covenant]

No way. If we do, the Hindus, now the most populous as well as most ancient religion on the planet, will absolutely go crazy with the gulf that's opened up around them. China will be untouched as well, by and large, and fuck the rest of us. Vaping anyone with any religion might be nice, but that'd basically demolish everything everywhere. I'd need to scour the landscape for someone to move in with. That might take a while.

[PeZook]

So...in one fell swoop, I massively increase the chances of humanity's survival in the future, put us in contact with an alien species and prove without a doubt FTL travel is possible?

Social disruption on a massive scale is a small price to pay for that. Besides, there'd be no horrifying increase in fanaticism - since the aliens come out and say they did it, what we can expect is a massive schism as billions of people are shocked into revising their entire worldview. It's impossible to predict what exactly would happen, but we get two planets for ourselves.

Naturally, there's still the little question of proving all those people really were relocated, rather than abducted and killed horribly in experiments. After all, you only get the alien's word for this

[CaptainChewbacca]

No way. If we do, the Hindus, now the most populous as well as most ancient religion on the planet, will absolutely go crazy with the gulf that's opened up around them. China will be untouched as well, by and large, and fuck the rest of us. Vaping anyone with any religion might be nice, but that'd basically demolish everything everywhere. I'd need to scour the landscape for someone to move in with. That might take a while.

Some estimates put the number of Christians in China as high as 100 million. I think they'd notice.

[speaker-to-trolls]

No way. If we do, the Hindus, now the most populous as well as most ancient religion on the planet, will absolutely go crazy with the gulf that's opened up around them. China will be untouched as well, by and large, and fuck the rest of us. Vaping anyone with any religion might be nice, but that'd basically demolish everything everywhere. I'd need to scour the landscape for someone to move in with. That might take a while.

Some estimates put the number of Christians in China as high as 100 million. I think they'd notice.

Christians, yes, but the becon only affects young earth creationist types, so I'd be willing to bet that a good portion of those Chinese Christians would stay around.

I can't help wondering whether the remaining religious people might start to look at atheists and non-religious or even non-Abrahamic people and start to think that, in some way, maybe they had something to do with this. After all, the aliens might say that they did it all on their own initiative to protect the innocent, but they've only got the aliens word to go on, and besides, they've just lost friends, lovers, spouses, brothers, sisters, parents, children, are they going to be thinking everything through rationally? Then, of course, there's the possibility that people will see this 'rapture' as some kind of validation of fundamentalist beliefs, maybe they decide that, since people of all the Abrahamic religions got taken, they need to start a new religion merging all three, maybe not. 'But the aliens told them what happened' I hear you point out, well, you say it was the aliens, but that's because you are an unbeliever who was fooled by the lies of Satan into disbelieving the evidence of the rapture. REPENT!