Hi all. I'm deep in some dialogue system code today so I won't answer all the new questions just yet - but this one is real easy, so I'll weigh in on it. I'll try to come in with some more new answers tomorrow.
So, if we can affect behavior by poisoning food supplies. Could we say, through strategic poisoning, make half the population strict vegetarians and the other strict carnivores?
"You're eating broccoli? Broccoli killed my father!" "You eat pork, the slayer of all of research team 5."
Well, this is an isolated station far out on the New Frontier in the relatively close future. It is prohibitively expensive to ship cargo to the station, so the only people getting
real pork and broccoli will be the highest status members of the crew and they'll have to pay a serious amount for it (unless you intervene in some way).
Most food on the station is manufactured on demand from an enriched nutritious substrate that is produced within the station's algaculture labs. The nutrient paste runs through a 3D printer in the cantina and is sculpted, coloured, scented & flavoured at the point of demand.
People aren't really going to remember effects associated with specific food types & that's partly because they're all very aware that almost all of the food comes from the same place.
And because the nutritious substrate is manufactured from algaculture pretty much everyone is
effectively vegetarian. I expect quite a few people will have their food sculpted to resemble meats though!
The
best way to affect station-wide behaviour through poisoning the food supplies is probably to sneak a few products from the med labs into the supply chain at the root - the alga-culture labs - but if you want to be a little more targeted in the way that you affect behaviour, then it would be a good idea to (for example) sneak a little something into the red food dyes.
Now, everyone who orders a
red-octopii cookie is going to be feeling the effects of those drugs/hormones/goop, but everyone else will be fine. It's a good way to target someone if you know what their favourite food is!
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Topic: Human Orbit | Influence your crew as the AI of a space station (Read 30296 times)