This makes me happy.Odgical said:Okay, picture the scene:
Hawaii.
Entrance to the vault is on top of an active volcano.
One sacrifice to be dropped into the lava every 10 or so years or the vault will be dropped into the lava.
Everyone must wear tiki masks.
Except that 'climbing' is not abstract, nor is your proposition a 'puzzle'.Silva said:That's more optimistic than you think it is. Have you ever had a puzzle that you couldn't figure out, that you looked at in a million different ways and still couldn't figure it out? The "obvious" answer isn't always obvious.Trolldor said:Uhh... I think they'd figure out to climb on top of one another before they decided to slaughter one another.
Throw in the survival-instinct-makes-us-violent factor. People going into the Vaults are doing so to escape what is viewed at their time to be an inevitable nuclear holocaust. They end up in this Vault, not knowing anyone, not knowing if anyone is trustworthy, and then have to work together to figure this out, while they know the world outside is blowing up? Not as easy as it first appears at all.
There's also the isolation factor. This room is small for ten people. Tall but small and with no way of finding privacy. There are constant irritations that will settle in after the first hour as people realise they have to use toilets in the full view of everyone else, or ask everyone to look away. With the women, imagine the irritation at the men having the full ability to look, and perhaps vice versa. Fear settles in through this, alongside mistrust.
Out of twelve randomly selected people, there is also the probability that someone has an unknown or unexpressed mental issue. They might even try to manipulate others if, in their panic after getting into the Vault and assuming the bombs have dropped, they immediately think of the "kill others to break the screen" option, assuming the Vault itself is a sick joke designed to turn them into murderers. Despair can do that to people.
Not to mention, have you ever tried to stand on top of a group of twelve people without falling down? It's actually a demanding acrobatic feat a lot of the time. It takes co-ordination and often friendship. And we know from reality TV that groups of randomly selected people do NOT all immediately become friends with each other if they end up in a tightly packed situation with no way out. If they work together it is not through sturdy ties but a mutual goal, and this one might not seem so inspiring when they find themselves locked in the Sphere in the first place.
Not Bad. DO you mind if i intergrate something like that into my shapeshifting vaults?soulblade06 said:Oh, I just came up with a completely evil idea:
Upon entering the vault, anyone over the age of 16 will undergo gender-change surgery. They will only be provided with clothes and other items normally used by those of their new gender (i.e. ex-females will be given boxers and ex-males will be given bras). All subjects would be aware that everyone else over 16 underwent the surgery and would be free to discuss it publicly. Some abnormality is to be expected, but anyone who deliberately avoids conforming will be publicly punished. Other vault protocols along these lines would include ones where either the males or females are left unchanged, but the other gender undergoes the surgery. Due to the obvious fact that such a society would be unsustainable in the long run, the vault will open in 30-40 years. Alternatively, children could be "imported" from other vaults and the vault could remain closed for an extended period (about 100 years).
The goal of this experiment would be to observe the impacts of traditional gender-identity on subjects who are forced to assume the role of the opposite gender, as well as impacts on the group as a whole. Possible results: mental dysfunction and/or breakdowns, changes in ideals, anti-authority mentality, and either formation of a society where the gender-change surgery is a right-of-passage and the population is sustained by bringing in outsiders or a complete and total rejection of the vault and the history it contains upon opening.
Another possible variation is where the above-16 subjects are isolated upon entering the vault and after surgery are told that they were the only ones to recieve the surgery for some random reason and that they were routed to a different vault than the one that everyone else was sent to (so they don't ask questions about where their friends/family went), and that if they don't conform to their new identy the population of the vault might treat them like an outcast. In this scenario, doing the operation to vault-dwellers after they have already been brought in (when they age to 17) would be too difficult to cover up. More intelligent (and paranoid) vault dwellers would note that everytime someone turns 17, they vanish and suddenly a 17-year-old of the opposite gender appears in the vault, leading to them spreading the truth (and contaminating the experiment). Because of this, such a process would not occur in those vaults. These vaults would open in 20 years.
The above vaults would create a test similar to the other one mentioned, except it would test an individual's willingness to accept a new identity in a situation where they believe they are the only one that is different. Possible results: paranoia, mental breakdowns, anti-authority conspiracy, and either violent rebellion or submission to gender standards.