The Blob Overmind: Malicious, or just too big/different to notice or care?

[nameless_survivor]

I was thinking your ants were sapient, and trying to communicate with a greater sapience.

[Erk]

I think, to the blob, we’re roughly as sapient as individual ants are to us. It has seen our brains, and doesn’t think they’re worth noting. And I think, to a certain degree, it is correct within the bleakness that is cataclysm. It’s a great old one, and to a great old one a human’s mind and contributions are as interesting as an ant’s is to us.

[kevin.granade]

The only ways out I see for humanity are:

1. One-side cooperation, i.e. humanity stays out of the way of the blob.
2. Team up with mycus/fungus/triffids to drive it off.

1 is honestly not that bad, the blob isn’t trying to kill people on an ongoing basis, it’s just deriving some benefit from occupying the planet. You can just interact with it the same way as you would with a big mass of biologically-derived zombies. You might run into problems somewhere down the line if you successfully eliminate some proportion of the zombies though…

2 is a lot more problematic, I don’t know if you’ve looked into Mycus’ idea of “cooperation”, but it’s not something most people would consider “fun”.

[Erk]

What about 2b: find a way to direct the triffid or mycus into fighting the blob, letting them keep each other busy so we can scratch a little hole for ourselves to recuperate? That seems the most Human thing to do honestly.

[nameless_survivor]

Option 3: Scorched Earth Tactics. Destroy the biosphere utterly, and irradiate or otherwise contaminate the surface to deny our enemies any significant use of the planet. Remaining humans either die, live in underground bunker complexes, or on the moon or something.

2 is a lot more problematic, I don’t know if you’ve looked into Mycus’ idea of “cooperation”, but it’s not something most people would consider “fun”.

Yeah, I ain’t buying what they’re selling. I make a point of burning that wretched mold wherever I find it, and would shoot an Infested survivor on sight if I ever ran across one.

What about the Triffids? I haven’t seen much about them, I haven’t even encountered any yet.

[kevin.granade]

scratch a little hole for ourselves to recuperate?

That’s pretty much my option one, avoid direct confrontation and just endure.

Option 3: Scorched Earth Tactics.

That’s like saying you can get out of a debit to the mob by shooting yourself, yea it’s not a problem anymore, but it’s also not what anyone would call a “win”.

[nameless_survivor]

That’s like saying you can get out of a debit to the mob by shooting yourself, yea it’s not a problem anymore, but it’s also not what anyone would call a “win”.

Yeah, but it beats being tortured to death by some wise guy for not paying up. I’d rather see the earth burn and humanity dead than let the Mycus have us.

Plus, if they think we are dead (and some of us really aren’t) and earth is worthless, they might go away. We still would have the rest of our solar system.

[Eastwardrope91]

Well actually I’m pretty sure it’s got to have a brain somewhere so we find the blob and the mycus’s central brain and you nuke it so hard it doesn’t exist anymore and maybe the rest of the body dies as well I mean you do have brain blobs which tentatively control the local blob forms so for them it stands to reason that they would have a central intelligence somewhere in the multidimensional space they exist in. The mycus on the other hand seem more like the flood from Halo than a normal fungal infestation. And with the flood in Halo you have to burn ALL of it if even one spore remains they can devour your world and they get smarter with every infected being learning from infected beings like generals and pilots and the fungus did come from a portal as only a few spores and produced the infestations it already has it even has different pure forms like the flood and if it’s like the flood it’s intelligence is global and local; local when it starts as it is more animalistic as it becomes more serious it becomes more intelligent which reminds me of the marloss fruit and mycus fruit which proves the mycus became more intelligent and is trying to get you to willingly surrender to its infection.

But plus side is it is at least asking Yea?

[nameless_survivor]

Only until it doesnt have to ask. The moment it becomes more advantageous for the Mycus to brute force infest, it will. It needs infiltrators right now, and allowing its infested human minions to keep some free will lets them do that, while it spreads and learns more about us. That shit is insidious, and must be burned out wherever it is found. The infested may look like your friends or loved ones, but they have mycelia in their brains influencing them. They are already dead, they just haven’t figured it out yet.

[Eastwardrope91]

Still slightly better than the blob. Blob doesn’t really care and brute forced everything. Plus it gives some really strong buffs to those who spend enough energy to try and become one with it I mean using the blossom and blooms will pretty much one shot zombies into allies and kills most other enemies with a few puffs even NPCs will be injured by it instantly giving them the fungal infection.
But there maybe a way to communicate with the mycus like with the flood maybe we can convince it to work with us like when Master Chief worked the Gravemind to stop the ring from firing Cold War pact. So all we need to do is get a weapon that would truly threaten the mycus like a bioweapon and just hang that over their head you stop consuming us and we won’t revert you into compost. Then we use them to kill the blob win win they get the zombies and we get paybacks for the blob destroying human civilization and maybe a buddy for rebuilding civilization. Worst case in that they adapt to the virus and we have a war again hopefully will bigger guns active on our side.

[Erk]

I don’t think the blob has anything we’d consider a brain. It seems more dispersed than that. I’m pretty sure the mycus is, if anything, less favourable than the blob… The blob is so distant that it can ignore us, while the mycus will actively seek to wipe us out. Plus, I’m not sure how the few remaining survivors could hope to threaten the mycus.

[Tamior]

I’m not sure everyone is following the ants analogy here.

Even if somehow ants manage to kill humans threatening their anthill, the most likely result is that PROFESSIONAL ant exterminators will be called in. No one will try and negotiate anything with ants.

If ants manage to form an alliance with something very dangerous to humans (i.e. some bacteria so that now a single bite can potentially kill a human), again, that will simply make humans exterminate this subtype of ants with extreme prejudice, not open up “negations”. So alliance with Mycus might not go too far.

The best bet for the ants is to try and find a way to be useful (or at least a non-issue) to humans.

[Shard]

Mycus actively works with humans that prove worthy, blob just doesn’t care because you are less than ants to it. Pretty much anything you could do to get the attention of the blob would simply result it in moving from uncaring to actively hostile. It is not human, it does not think human, it does not feel human, it does not understand human, it does not want to understand human.

Of the three main factions, I believe triffid would be the most likely to agree to neutrality or alliance, followed by the mycus, while the blob is too distant and unfocused to even consider either. Think of humans as a remnant of a supermassive ant colony, triffid as multiple bee/wasp colonies, mycus as combination of mushrooms, mold, and parasitic fungus, and blob as a hurricane. Two of them have possibilities that don’t involve “You just die” but the third you don’t have much option with besides “Don’t get in the way” if you want to survive.

[Eastwardrope91]

Triffids have shown no sign of recognizing humanity unlike the mycus they have made an attempt so communication is possible with them. The reason we can’t really talk with the triffids is that we don’t have the capacity to speak to them the best we could get to is like talking to a dog a dog knows you are saying something and might vaguely know what you are saying but doesn’t really understand what you’re saying just the gist of something’s as its seen what they mean like when you say " do you wanna go outside? " and the dog gets excited it doesn’t know what you’re saying it just recognizes that when you say that you are going to take it outside. Mycus on the other hand can be talked with because they have still sentient hosts who can convey it’s wants and it’s words as well as telling it what you want and need it has a known means of communication unlike the triffids and blob and more often than not the triffids just want to be left alone and be hippies near their hive thing. As for the blob we have the same problem as the triffids this is also the reason why aliens are such a terrifying prospect as we have no way to communicate to them easily.

[Shard]

Blob: avoid and try not to get eaten and converted
Triffid: allow to grow near cities, fertilizer when allowing vehicles to pass through unharmed, flamethrowers otherwise, maybe transplant a few of the groves near the edges of cities, might even be able to farm with them (more fertilizer obviously for that)
Mycus: Find a local guide and have a chat, hope you can work something out. Might need flamethrowers/chemical sprayers on the walls to hold back the mindless fungaloids and spore clouds even if you reach agreement with the local guides though, it is hard to stop them as a single person.

[Eastwardrope91]

The best you could hope for triffids really is Pavlov’s dog sort of relationship you bomb them so hard they stop harming humans as we have no way to communicate with them. Mycus as said previously might need to be strong armed but would like be able to help humanity. The blob has the same problem as the triffids while the triffids might be able to emphasize with us more but we have no way to communicate with them maybe if humanity wasn’t bashed back into the stone age (we only have what remains of our technology so as of now it’s stone age). The mycus however understands us enough to reach out for the strongest of us and has a means of communication a peace treaty may be possible but it would likely be only as long as we can hold them back or threaten them with a MAD situation or could end up with a world war 2 pact such as the one between the United States and the Soviet Union they hated each other but banded together to fight a common enemy (which is also why we hate fascism more than communism and why we look at the holocaust and not the Great Purge in Russia and other such in which the Russians kill over 100 million 10 times more than the Nazi’s ever did) if we do that we would be back to war after the battle against the blob and triffids so like the cold war we need a WMD to hold over their heads. All in all humanity is kinda screwed recuperation could be possible but it’s gonna be a long road. On that note it’d be neat to see a another game which takes place far after the cataclysm and is about rebuilding more than surviving like a civilization kind if game in which you fight the blobs infestations and the other inhabitants whom want to eat you.

[nameless_survivor]

Isolation is a good move, perhaps even the best one short term, but it will not be viable in the long run unless we develop some way of permanently closing portals and preventing new ones from being opened from outside our plane of existence. And even then, the Blob for example might have enough juice to just brute force its way through our defenses. In the very long term, we will either have to open up diplomatic channels with the other factions, and/or exterminate the ones we can’t simply avoid.

At this point, it looks like we will probably have to kill off most of them. The Blob is too big/different to communicate with us, and even if it could, wouldn’t care if its actions harmed us. Mycus want to use us as meat puppets and infest earth. Mi-Go are supposed to be chaotic evil psychopaths by human standards, and want us as slaves/dinner. No idea about the triffids, haven’t seen much lore on them.

[kevin.granade]

You seem to be missing the point here, humanity does not have the resources to achieve:

• a stalemate
• mutually assured destruction
• any degree of respect from the blob or several of the other alien factions

Basically humanity is that anthill that was described up-thread, and the outcome of making a nuisance of yourself is getting yourself wiped out. The only options are one-sided coexistence or risking the final destruction of humanity.

[nameless_survivor]

You seem to be missing the point here, humanity does not have the resources to achieve:

• a stalemate
• mutually assured destruction
• any degree of respect from the blob or several of the other alien factions

Basically humanity is that anthill that was described up-thread, and the outcome of making a nuisance of yourself is getting yourself wiped out. The only options are one-sided coexistence or risking the final destruction of humanity.

Well obviously. There are only roughly 50 million humans left on the whole planet immediately after the cataclysm, and you can probably knock off at least 50-75% of that over the next month, so of course we can’t do anything NOW.

So we hide, reorganize, and rebuild until we DO have the resources to do one or all of those things. It might take centuries or millenia, but vengeance is a pretty damn good motivator for humans. And it stays strong across generations too, as demonstrated by practically all of human history.

Might even rebuild faster if we use cloning or artifical gestation (seen plenty of mutated fetuses growing in tanks in labs, so that might be a possibility) to shore up our numbers, or manage to steal some particularly sweet alien technology.

It would be cool if you could iterate time passage between character spawns. So after one dies, you could set 50 years to pass, and the world changes some, human factions shrink/grow, settlements appear and expand or fail and decay, Zombie or monster spawns and concentrations change based on your choices, kills, faction interactions and strength, etc. Kind of like finishing Fallout, and then immediately playing Fallout 2, where some time has passed after the first game, and people have started to get their shit together.