Questions: The Beast

[Payne]

Actually, it takes less to affect a large system, when you take into account payoff and costs.

However, you all seem to be using a very narrow description of "effect".

...Perhaps

I'm using it in the sense that in a small system, the WHOLE system is easier to affect.

In a large system, while the entire system isnt as easily affected, more people could possibly be affected.

Still not quite Cain means I think. It's the problem I'm grappling with myself at the moment though, so I can't really think of the answer to that riddle either.

[Cain]

The whole system is built of subsystems.  Overlap of support for these systems create high load nodes which are vital for the overall support of a system.  By shutting down enough nodes, you create a system overload where the sheer amount of....everything, knocks the entire system on its arse.  And because of the highly centralized nature of most of modern society, bar the internet, this becomes a very simple job.  All you have to do is identify the correct nodes.

[P3nT4gR4m]

This harks back to my mechanical alchemy rant - careful what you wish for.

It's easy to get on the wrong side of the machine, or to see bits that are, quite evidently, pants. But I implore you not to think this means it needs destroyed. Think power vacuum, think savagery, look at the quality of life in countries where you can't phone for a domino's because not only are there no dominos there's no phone network either.

Oh yeah - massive improvement. Internets? DVD rental store? Library? Fuck that shit - you'll be too busy dodging bullets and trying to find a scrap of food. Destroying the machine (if you could actually find a way to pull it off) is a category A++ disaster, waiting to happen. Turn on CNN and check out some famines or floods or hurricanes when you have the chance. Take a good, long fucking look because if you kill the machine you're gonna need images like this to make it through the long nights ahead. You'll call these images paradise.

The machine is what keeps everything together. Not just the bad shit but the good stuff too. Okay it's a friggin ramshackle, cobbled together affair and you can criticise it till the cows come home, hell I'll even join you but it doesn't need broken even more. It needs fixed. Otherwise you'll find yourself flying planes into buildings like those stupid turbaniac fucks who thought they could solve a problem by breaking something.

[Cain]

Sure.  Which is why you have to have a good idea of what systems you wish to deal with.  However, since few people here are intending to blow up an oil tanker on a major trade route (for example) I am not too worried.

[P3nT4gR4m]

It's the fuckers at the top I really want to get. The ones who are hoarding all the stuff.

Problem is that history quite eloquently illustrates what happens when you kill them - they come back with different faces.

What I want is for every man woman and child on this mudball to become a philanthropist, overnight.

I can't see any way to pull this off so I settle for my lot in life - laughing at the fuck up instead.

If the human race really is a 'race' it's like some kinda fucked up, three legged, egg and spoon blindfolded sack race over an obstacle course.

I got plenty to keep me chuckling.

Suggestions on a postcard....

[Idem]

The whole system is built of subsystems.  Overlap of support for these systems create high load nodes which are vital for the overall support of a system.  By shutting down enough nodes, you create a system overload where the sheer amount of....everything, knocks the entire system on its arse.  And because of the highly centralized nature of most of modern society, bar the internet, this becomes a very simple job.  All you have to do is identify the correct nodes.

I don't think I'm quite as... professional as you at this.

[Payne]

The whole system is built of subsystems.  Overlap of support for these systems create high load nodes which are vital for the overall support of a system.  By shutting down enough nodes, you create a system overload where the sheer amount of....everything, knocks the entire system on its arse.  And because of the highly centralized nature of most of modern society, bar the internet, this becomes a very simple job.  All you have to do is identify the correct nodes.

I don't think I'm quite as... professional as you at this.

Which is my point... I'm learning here, i'm picking up on recomended reading, but I still don't have enough awareness of what it is I face.

Hence the title of this thread.

I know what Cain is saying, but I think I would be out of my depth without the debate on the more intelectual subjects here...

[Idem]

I just fuck shit up, for now.

[Cain]

BUMP:

http://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/
http://www.fifthgeneration.phaticcommunion.com/
http://www.tdaxp.com/

Some different and divergent views on the topic.

[Payne]

Sweet!

Thanks man, I'll no doubt read most of it late at night, in between chapters in that alien abduction book I'm (still) reading.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Where is Fancy bred?
In the heart or in the head,
or in Rourke's bakery instead?

And is that fancy just a dream,
is it simply life or The Machine?
Can we fight against the color Green?

Do we really want to?

In vision I saw Eris (tis true!)
In Salvia's deep smoke she grew
so I took another toke or two.

And then she spoke.

I wrote the words that Eris said
I wrote as I sat in my bed,
I wrote what she spoke in my head.

And out of it all, the one refrain,
The one I can't shake from my Brain,
The one to make the Machine Insane...

She said "Just Poison the Money Supply."

I wish I knew what the hell she meant.

(Based on a trip I took on Salvia)

Ratatosk, Squirrel of Discord
Muncher of The ChaoAcorn
Chatterer of the Words of Eris
POEE of The Great Googlie Mooglie Cabal