ITT: Original Story Ideas

[tyrannosaurus vex]

International tensions reach a crisis point when a wayward American fighter jet is shot down by an Iranian squadron. Cooler heads try and fail to deescalate the response from a trigger-happy executive, who has been itching for any excuse to show the world -- and an increasingly unhappy American public -- the full force of the US military. To the nauseating shock of everyone in the room, the President orders a direct strike against several Iranian locations, including Tehran itself, not with conventional weapons but with low-yield tactical nuclear missiles. Fearing for the future of America and indeed all of humanity, the Joint Chiefs of Staff quickly attempt to oust the President, but their plan is foiled and the missiles are launched. The world watches in horror as two million Iranians are vaporized on live television. The remnants of the Iranian military call in their sleeper cells in the US, unleashing a flurry of suicide bombings across the country over the next 24 hours, killing thousands. Against the strained exhortation of literally every adviser, the President orders a full-scale retaliation with ICBMs, intending to turn the Persians to glass. Missiles are launched for their 15-20 minute flight time the whole planet goes silent and numb.

The warheads fall toward Iranian cities as expected, but rather than detonating, they clunk through roofs and onto ancient streets, cold and useless. There had apparently been a flaw in a testing routine used in all modern American multiple-warhead ICBMs, which had only ever been tested in computers on account of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. With the lion's teeth excised in human history's most embarrassing military blunder, America's vulnerabilities are exposed. Within thirty minutes, a thousand Russian and Chinese missiles are sailing though the stratosphere.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

International tensions reach a crisis point when a wayward American fighter jet is shot down by an Iranian squadron. Cooler heads try and fail to deescalate the response from a trigger-happy executive, who has been itching for any excuse to show the world -- and an increasingly unhappy American public -- the full force of the US military. To the nauseating shock of everyone in the room, the President orders a direct strike against several Iranian locations, including Tehran itself, not with conventional weapons but with low-yield tactical nuclear missiles. Fearing for the future of America and indeed all of humanity, the Joint Chiefs of Staff quickly attempt to oust the President, but their plan is foiled and the missiles are launched. The world watches in horror as two million Iranians are vaporized on live television. The remnants of the Iranian military call in their sleeper cells in the US, unleashing a flurry of suicide bombings across the country over the next 24 hours, killing thousands. Against the strained exhortation of literally every adviser, the President orders a full-scale retaliation with ICBMs, intending to turn the Persians to glass. Missiles are launched for their 15-20 minute flight time the whole planet goes silent and numb.

The warheads fall toward Iranian cities as expected, but rather than detonating, they clunk through roofs and onto ancient streets, cold and useless. There had apparently been a flaw in a testing routine used in all modern American multiple-warhead ICBMs, which had only ever been tested in computers on account of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. With the lion's teeth excised in human history's most embarrassing military blunder, America's vulnerabilities are exposed. Within thirty minutes, a thousand Russian and Chinese missiles are sailing though the stratosphere.

These would also fail, due to shoddy parts and corrupt maintenance contractors.

Everyone looks silly, and the entire human race sulks for a generation.  This is known to later historians as "The Morrisey Era".

[minuspace]

International tensions reach a crisis point when a wayward American fighter jet is shot down by an Iranian squadron. Cooler heads try and fail to deescalate the response from a trigger-happy executive, who has been itching for any excuse to show the world -- and an increasingly unhappy American public -- the full force of the US military. To the nauseating shock of everyone in the room, the President orders a direct strike against several Iranian locations, including Tehran itself, not with conventional weapons but with low-yield tactical nuclear missiles. Fearing for the future of America and indeed all of humanity, the Joint Chiefs of Staff quickly attempt to oust the President, but their plan is foiled and the missiles are launched. The world watches in horror as two million Iranians are vaporized on live television. The remnants of the Iranian military call in their sleeper cells in the US, unleashing a flurry of suicide bombings across the country over the next 24 hours, killing thousands. Against the strained exhortation of literally every adviser, the President orders a full-scale retaliation with ICBMs, intending to turn the Persians to glass. Missiles are launched for their 15-20 minute flight time the whole planet goes silent and numb.

The warheads fall toward Iranian cities as expected, but rather than detonating, they clunk through roofs and onto ancient streets, cold and useless. There had apparently been a flaw in a testing routine used in all modern American multiple-warhead ICBMs, which had only ever been tested in computers on account of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. With the lion's teeth excised in human history's most embarrassing military blunder, America's vulnerabilities are exposed. Within thirty minutes, a thousand Russian and Chinese missiles are sailing though the stratosphere.

I like the imagery.  To save face, America orders second launch, with a cargo payload containing plans to build S9G reactors that can run on non-ballistic level nuclear fuel.  World enjoys 30 years of free energy, reducing international tensions and clearing way to lasting world-peace.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

After being bitten by a radioactive dog, a disgruntled postal worker develops an extremely sensitive sense of smell & super-hearing, along with a tendency to bite anyone who looks him in the eyes. Delirious, he sews himself a costume and takes his workplace hostage, announcing to the world that he will now be known as "MAIL MAN".

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A secret society dedicated to returning their nation to the values of an idealized imperial past invest in a reality television game show franchise as a means of identifying, vetting, and indoctrinating outside candidates for political positions. Combining blackmail, favor-trading, and appeals to shared values, this organization pressures newly-minted politicians into making certain decisions.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

A secret society dedicated to returning their nation to the values of an idealized imperial past invest in a reality television game show franchise as a means of identifying, vetting, and indoctrinating outside candidates for political positions. Combining blackmail, favor-trading, and appeals to shared values, this organization pressures newly-minted politicians into making certain decisions.

Don't give them any ideas, goddammit.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A secret society dedicated to returning their nation to the values of an idealized imperial past invest in a reality television game show franchise as a means of identifying, vetting, and indoctrinating outside candidates for political positions. Combining blackmail, favor-trading, and appeals to shared values, this organization pressures newly-minted politicians into making certain decisions.

Don't give them any ideas, goddammit.

It's too late. Former hosts (but not winners) of localized versions of The Apprentice are running for local offices in Brazil & the UK, according to an article I read this morning.

[minuspace]

Two groups of aliens turn the cold war hot, circumventing their own non-aggression treaties by dumping exotic alien weapons on human nations without training. The story follows human strategic skunkworks teams examining the weapons and determining scalable guidelines for their use in warfare -- important because the mechanisms & tradeoffs used by these weapons are wholly unlike conventional earth weapons.

Skynet is having trouble establishing its 1.0 version of civilization on planet Earth.  Nothing serious, just that all the "off the shelf" technologies it uses to perform its task are meant to work on any planet with complex life-forms, meaning that the tech must be trained to fully interface with any particular system.  A "last mile" of sorts that connects it directly to the electrical firing patterns of any nervous system.  Like a factory prosthetic needs to learn a users particular patterns in order to work.  Our current state of political affairs then represents a step in this training process, to learn how to correct our situation from the anamoulous position we find ourselves in.  Like learning how to drive a car (competitively) by finding the minimum turn radius possible at high velocity, edge finding, and correcting tragectory after losing controll.  Essentially a test to ensure that the system can regain controll in difficult situations, also training for perfect fit.

Distrikct 9 ist keine originelle Idee

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A dragon that hoards friends befriends a dragon that hoards paradoxes and another dragon who only hoards things that don't exist. The ensuing conflict destroys the den.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A suicide bomber discovers he is immortal. He is captured.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

The united states goes to war with an alien civilization whose weapons consist solely of mechanisms for teleporting small metal slugs (which trade places with whatever is in the location they previously were). (After all, one doesn't want to use kinetic weapons inside space ships.) The entire rest of Earth is caught in the crossfire.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Zombie apocalypse but with a twist. The returned dead are not particularly zombified but are much as they were in life. However, since most of the dead are from pre-modern times this still presents a problem. The Earth is overrun by undead barbarians.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Scientists discover a hormone that tracks with willpower. In silicon valley, the poor sell their willpower (extracted, with large needles, from a part of their brainstem) to wealthy developers, who become addicted. Those who have sold their willpower to the clinics are sometimes found passed out from hunger in the middle of supermarkets. (A willpower high somewhat resembles a cocaine or amphetamine high in the sense that it involves manic energy and sustained effort; the difference is that those high on willpower seek out tasks that involve making large numbers of decisions.)  Later, a bioengineering lab figures out how to synthesize the stuff, and mortality rates skyrocket as type-a personalities mainline it and overdose.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Scientists discover a hormone that tracks with willpower. In silicon valley, the poor sell their willpower (extracted, with large needles, from a part of their brainstem) to wealthy developers, who become addicted. Those who have sold their willpower to the clinics are sometimes found passed out from hunger in the middle of supermarkets. (A willpower high somewhat resembles a cocaine or amphetamine high in the sense that it involves manic energy and sustained effort; the difference is that those high on willpower seek out tasks that involve making large numbers of decisions.)  Later, a bioengineering lab figures out how to synthesize the stuff, and mortality rates skyrocket as type-a personalities mainline it and overdose.

This is the best of all possible futures.

[minuspace]

Scientists discover a hormone that tracks with willpower. In silicon valley, the poor sell their willpower (extracted, with large needles, from a part of their brainstem) to wealthy developers, who become addicted. Those who have sold their willpower to the clinics are sometimes found passed out from hunger in the middle of supermarkets. (A willpower high somewhat resembles a cocaine or amphetamine high in the sense that it involves manic energy and sustained effort; the difference is that those high on willpower seek out tasks that involve making large numbers of decisions.)  Later, a bioengineering lab figures out how to synthesize the stuff, and mortality rates skyrocket as type-a personalities mainline it and overdose.

Was just now thinking of Cronenbergs's Secret Weapons and "meta-adrenaline".  Instead of an actual compound the "meta" element indicates how the adrenaline is elicited from the prescribed environment and particular situations into which subjects are injected.  The situations are contrived to instatiate a set of trigger sequences, repeatedly and in a controlled environment.  Once firmly encoded and reinforced, triggers can be translated onto external environments. Once activated, subjects will "independently" seek out firing them in sequence.  Sort of like targeted search results, on a grand scale.