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[Lyn Farel]

I seem to have read somewhere on the fiction portal that Insorum as per the original blueprint is clean and does not kill, while retro engineering it is actually what makes it imperfect. Something that was described in the novel... Or is that just fantasy ?

[Shiori]

Again, you don't have to retcon in billions of deaths. Amarr are capable of ABC defense, too.

Possibly. It's just, mass murder or total abandonment of a segment of the population seems such an unlikely component of an ABC defense plan; a bit callous even for the Amarr.

It might be that there's not enough sealed environments and gas masks to go around for everyone and the slaves are last on the priority list, of course, but even then the tone of the article just seems.. off. I'd expect the expected miserable deaths due to chemical attack to be mentioned somewhere.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

It might be that there's not enough sealed environments and gas masks to go around for everyone and the slaves are last on the priority list, of course,

You can bet that they are last on the priority list. Also, we're not speaking about any Amarr here, but Sarumites. If it's strategically and tactically the sound strategy to get property they can't reasonably defend out of the way, because it will be otherwise be dangerous itself, then, well, pragmatics says kill them off. It's not that it'd make the situation better if you'd have to shoot them once they attack you...

but even then the tone of the article just seems.. off. I'd expect the expected miserable deaths due to chemical attack to be mentioned somewhere.

I expect them to be made as well. I'd also expect that Elder's don't waste valuable insorum if they won't reach any slaves with it. And I'd expect that if a chemical agent that is supposed to be leathal is used in orbital bombardments that it would come up in the news that it actually isn't leathal.

Having re-read the writeup for that year in Evelopedia, it seems though that, indeed, Insorum was not leathal. It is as well alluded there that on Sarum lots of slaves were captured by the Elders. How this is actually consistent with Sarumites killing the slaves off remains a mystery. Maybe they recovered the dead bodies.

Even so, news articles and writup agree that Insorum, even though not itself a bioweapon, changed apparently slaves affected by it:

some kind of directed chemical {later identified as Insorum} bombardment was delivered from low orbit, provoking rioting and mass uprisings among the slave population

So, okay, maybe Insorum wasn't directly a bioweapon, still the Elder's had no quarrel with turning the slaves into such. Not sure if that's really better.

I still think there are lots of unresolved questions and contradictions in the material there.

[Silver Night]

It might be that there's not enough sealed environments and gas masks to go around for everyone and the slaves are last on the priority list, of course,

You can bet that they are last on the priority list. Also, we're not speaking about any Amarr here, but Sarumites. If it's strategically and tactically the sound strategy to get property they can't reasonably defend out of the way, because it will be otherwise be dangerous itself, then, well, pragmatics says kill them off. It's not that it'd make the situation better if you'd have to shoot them once they attack you...

but even then the tone of the article just seems.. off. I'd expect the expected miserable deaths due to chemical attack to be mentioned somewhere.

I expect them to be made as well. I'd also expect that Elder's don't waste valuable insorum if they won't reach any slaves with it. And I'd expect that if a chemical agent that is supposed to be leathal is used in orbital bombardments that it would come up in the news that it actually isn't leathal.

Having re-read the writeup for that year in Evelopedia, it seems though that, indeed, Insorum was not leathal. It is as well alluded there that on Sarum lots of slaves were captured by the Elders. How this is actually consistent with Sarumites killing the slaves off remains a mystery. Maybe they recovered the dead bodies.

Even so, news articles and writup agree that Insorum, even though not itself a bioweapon, changed apparently slaves affected by it:

some kind of directed chemical {later identified as Insorum} bombardment was delivered from low orbit, provoking rioting and mass uprisings among the slave population

So, okay, maybe Insorum wasn't directly a bioweapon, still the Elder's had no quarrel with turning the slaves into such. Not sure if that's really better.

I still think there are lots of unresolved questions and contradictions in the material there.

Hopefully the more problematic bits with get the 'Heth' treatment. As usual CCP's vacation schedule gets in the way. 

[Synthia]

I went through the Empyrean Age book today, did not see any mention of what version of Insorum was being used.

Found two old news articles, from when the Insorum affair first started:
http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/highly-dangerous-compound-believed-compromised-massive-search-underway-1/

http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/internal-report-indicates-prior-untruths-on-part-of-zainou-1/

"Insorzapine bisulfate" is the compound known as Insorum, and may or may not be a hugely lethal substance. It was reported that " the fact that when given to a healthy organism the compound will attack natural DNA repair processes, causing a rapid chain reaction of cell suicide that within days leads to a cancerous death. ", but later it was reported that Zainou Biotech may have falsified some reports.
"Insorzapine-4" is apparently a safe compound, but this is NOT Insorum. Anyone with knowledge of pharmaceuticals will be able to explain how similar chemicals can have different effects. left-handed molecules and so forth.

Insorzapine bisulfate is also the substance that the Blood raiders got their hands on, for the attack on Mabnen, with all the riots and massacres and other violence as the result.

There is also the "Insorum Components" item, showinfo reveals "These are the raw chemical components used to make insorzapine bisulfate, an unstable reactive mutagen binder with uses that include negating the effects of Vitoc. This compound is also dangerously lethal."

"Unstable". Hmmph.

Given that Zainou Biotech have falsified data regarding Insorum, I do not believe it is safe to assume that Insorum has no side effects, although no side effects were mentioned from the Mabnen incident either.

[Ollie]

Given that Zainou Biotech have falsified data regarding Insorum, I do not believe it is safe to assume that Insorum has no side effects, although no side effects were mentioned from the Mabnen incident either.

Oxygen has potentially lethal side-effects if given inappropriately.

I skimmed through the Mabnen incident report and so may have missed some of the finer detail, but my take on it was that most of the (reported) deaths came from "the riots and massacres and other violence" you mentioned. I put this down to a freighter load of slaves suddenly becoming free and rebelling violently.

Objectively, the "this compound is also dangerously lethal" statement could be referring to the 'Insorum Components' item (rather than Insorum itself). It's kind of vague in its wording, although I tend to agree with you that it's probably talking about Insorum rather than its component parts.

Real world stuff now: Something that attacks 'natural DNA repair processes' generally doesn't cause a rapid chain reaction of cell suicide (apoptosis). What it (eventually) progresses to is a defective cell line persisting rather than being knocked out of the organism, which then predisposes to cancer. One example is the gene defect in Hereditary Non-Polyposis Colon Cancer which affects mismatch repair (MMR) proteins and results in a presentation of bowel cancer 15-20 years earlier compared with the general (spontaneous) population. It still takes 30+ years to develop though because it's not a one-hit pathogenesis.

Then again this is a potential engineered bioweapon and we're pretending to fly spaceships in a fictional future in a fictional galaxy, so how much you can handwave and how much you should extrapolate from real-world sources probably doesn't crossover too greatly. File the MMR stuff away for a trivia night at a pub near you in the (near) future and you might win a few free drinks - although you'd probably be better served remembering Beiber's current girlfriend or One Direction's birthdays at least for the next few years

[Esna Pitoojee]

To be fair, Ollie, what that assumes is that "attacks the natural DNA repair processes" refers to something that would simply shut these processes down, paving the way for limited errors later triggering cancer. "Attacks" is a very vague word though; it could mean "seizes control of the DNA repair processes to deliberately write in errors." In an Vitoxin-effected cell, the targeted DNA sites would be promptly located within stretches of Vitoxin-related DNA; these are then scrambled by the hijacked processes, crippling Vitoxin's ability to reproduce and shortly purging it from the body. In a non-infected body, by contrast, the Insorum does not immediately located a suitable target and instead remains in the body for an extended period of time; during this time, the "highly unstable" Insorum instead reacts with natural stretches of cellular DNA, resulting in rapid cell death or mutation as the cells find their normal processes interrupted.

Something else struck me in something Synthia posted as well:

It was reported that " the fact that when given to a healthy organism the compound will attack natural DNA repair processes, causing a rapid chain reaction of cell suicide that within days leads to a cancerous death. ",

Bolding mine.

Here is a plausible answer for why no mass-deaths due to "Insorum poisoning" were reported immediately during the Elder invasion: There were none. "Within days" could mean a week, even two - not something that makes people fall over dead minutes after breathing it. By the time deaths began, the news had already moved on.

[Ollie]

To be fair, Ollie, what that assumes is that "attacks the natural DNA repair processes" refers to something that would simply shut these processes down, paving the way for limited errors later triggering cancer. "Attacks" is a very vague word though; it could mean "seizes control of the DNA repair processes to deliberately write in errors." In an Vitoxin-effected cell, the targeted DNA sites would be promptly located within stretches of Vitoxin-related DNA; these are then scrambled by the hijacked processes, crippling Vitoxin's ability to reproduce and shortly purging it from the body. In a non-infected body, by contrast, the Insorum does not immediately located a suitable target and instead remains in the body for an extended period of time; during this time, the "highly unstable" Insorum instead reacts with natural stretches of cellular DNA, resulting in rapid cell death or mutation as the cells find their normal processes interrupted.

I agree. To be honest, all it probably means is that the EVE Devs aren't well versed in the minutiae of genetics or cancer science - which no-one should expect them to be.

It was reported that " the fact that when given to a healthy organism the compound will attack natural DNA repair processes, causing a rapid chain reaction of cell suicide that within days leads to a cancerous death. ",

Bolding mine.

Here is a plausible answer for why no mass-deaths due to "Insorum poisoning" were reported immediately during the Elder invasion: There were none. "Within days" could mean a week, even two - not something that makes people fall over dead minutes after breathing it. By the time deaths began, the news had already moved on.

I think this is a good point.

It offers a reasonable explanation that can be worked into co-operative RP without causing too much offense on either side of the debate.

That said, compare it to reporting of the after effects of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the medium and long-term effects of radiation exposure in those cities were reported despite the length of time it took for some of them to become apparent. Certainly a good deal of our modern understanding of radiation risk for conditions such as leukemia and thyroid cancer came initially from our followup of those populations. In other words, there wasn't a total lack of reporting.

I think it comes down to that we're trying to shoehorn a fictional universe into 'real world' concepts. In EVE, devs are doing a lot of other things around the time of events which might impact on their ability to get the fine detail that some of us crave into PF form. Trying to figure out what they were doing five or more years down the track and extrapolating it to our RP now is something of an exercise in frustration. In the real world, that detail is there because it's what the media are paid to do and it's where the passion of investigative journalists lies.

I think we need to realise that just because something's not printed and quotable in EVE lore doesn't mean that we can't express an opinion in-game that appears as a follow-on consistent with the lore that we do have. Likewise, opinions that are in conflict with this are not necessarily wrong either. I think that sometimes we try to say 'well, this is how it is offline so that must hold true in the game too' in an effort to rationalise our view of the game world and 'win' the debate. In doing so we miss out on the persisting RP potential of having no singular position come out as the unequivocal 'victor'.

[Louella Dougans]

The long term effects of insorum exposure from the Mabnen attack are unknown.

All non-Minmatar in exposed areas were murdered, and all Minmatar in exposed areas were killed by Imperial counter-attacks.


Similarly for the Elder Fleet attacks.