This PDF contains both blog posts, ‘Resident Evil 5: Wesker’s Eugenic Endgame‘ and ‘Resident Evil 5 and Anthrax War: On Africa and Real Biowarfare Experiments‘.
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Legend Of Zelda PDF added.
January 3, 2010 — popularsymbolismEDIT: The original PDF version was missing some content. If you downloaded the PDF prior to this notice, please re-download it again to get the full monty.
I have created a PDF of the ‘Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past‘ article. I have also updated the article and added a Download button to the PDF document.
Download PDF 'Legend Of Zelda - A Link To The Past: Shintoism At Play'
With three PDFs in the bag, I will now be returning to the belated Metal Gear Solid 2 article. This essay will be strikingly different from any other Metal Gear Solid 2 article currently out there.
I’ve also noticed that the Symbolism section has generated a lot of traffic over the past couple of days – so I intend to expand this section of the site over the coming days.
Resident Evil 5/Biohazard 5: Wesker’s eugenic endgame (spoilers)
July 15, 2009 — popularsymbolism 
Wesker's plan is one of global depopulation of the human species in order to stop all the 'pestilence and war'. Rationalizing this to himself, he concludes that human beings are driving themselves to the point of self-destruction, and that rather than destroying the world, he is trying to save it by forcing evolution onto the human race through viruses. Those who will survive the coming cataclysm will have proven themselves to be genetically superior and will earn themselves a place in Wesker's New World Order - though given his aspirations to become a God, it's likely he will inject himself with a Control plaga after that and rule over them; as Chris points out to Sheva at one point: 'Wesker doesn't give a damn about anybody but himself'.
“Evolution! It’s a philosopher’s stone, one that will choose through DNA, who shall proceed to the next stage. My vision and his combined, now made a reality.” – Excella Gione, Resident Evil 5[Youtube]
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Consider this a companion piece to the main article “The Impact Of Zombies On Society” written back in March this year. At the time I had not yet had a chance to play the latest Resident Evil. As I was impressed by how accurate my initial hunch proved to be (the latest Resident Evil game reveals that Umbrella boss Spencer’s endgoal was a eugenically planned society somewhere inbetween Brave New World and a horror movie), I wanted to do a separate article on Resident Evil 5 – chiefly because the backstory is so rich with layer upon layer of references/allusions that would not be immediately obvious to someone who would play the games casually.
Table of Contents
- Themes
- Pharmaceutical corporations
- Meaning behind words/names
- General observations
- Footnotes
Themes
Pharmaceutical corporations
The interlocking pharma companies, their various branches operating worldwide and their founders’ Social Darwinist utopic/dystopic leanings resembles the eugenics movement and their stated intent to create a superior Nordic Aryan society worldwide – at the expense of anyone not measuring up to the aforementioned type.
For more information on eugenics, I can highly recommend the 2003 book ‘War Against The Weak: Eugenics And America’s Campaign To Create a Master Race‘ by Edwin Black and the 1998 documentary ‘Homosapiens 1900‘. You can also read my previous article partly relating to the subject, ‘The Impact Of Zombies On Society‘, to see how the subject specifically relates to the Resident Evil series.
Travis Trading and Tricell
The fictional backstory begins with a wealthy European merchant family in the days of David Livingstone travelling back and forth to Africa in the 1800s and setting up shop there. Henry Travis of the Travis Trading company publishes his life’s work on the country’s rich collection of flora and fauna based on his company’s own exploration of the country.
This exhaustive 72-volume set entitled ‘Survey of Natural History’ was at first widely lauded by scientists – but it wasn’t too long after a rumour flourished that much of what had been written in the books was fabricated or the result of Henry Travis’ wildest imagination. Henry’s work was ultimately discredited by the scientific community, launching the author into a deep state of depression that eventually resulted in his death two years after publication of his book.
As it transpired, the one who produced the false rumour to begin with was actually one of his [Henry Travis]‘ own brothers. Not because of any disagreements or quarrels he had with his brother – on the contrary, no one was more convinced of his book’s importance – which was why he didn’t want to share the secrets the book contained with the rest of the world – he wanted his company, Travis Trading, to be the only one to reap the many fruits of Africa.
Travis Trading had a field day in the country – collecting samples of every known animal, plant and insect mentioned in Henry Travis’ book – samples which were soon used for pharmaceutical research and development. Shortly thereafter, several ‘independent’ in name only pharmaceutical corporations are founded and later consolidated under a single banner, Tricell Corporation (also see Tricell, pt2). Tricell would concern itself with pharmaceutical research and Travis Trading was its shipping division.
Ozwell E.Spencer and Umbrella
From left to right: (left) Lord Ozwell E. Spencer, the fictional character in charge of Umbrella; (middle) Sir Francis Galton, the father of eugenics; (right) Lord Herbert Spencer, coiner of the phrase 'survival of the fittest'. Like Galton, Ozwell E. Spencer regularly travelled Africa as an explorer (and like Galton, he sees nothing wrong with 'supplanting the inferior race', as Galton liked to put it); like Galton, he is a true believer in eugenics; and like Herbert Spencer, he believes fervently in the right of the weak to perish. And this same train of thought later seems to permeate Wesker's reasoning: 'All weak people exist to be eaten'.
But not everyone was discouraged from researching Henry Travis’ book by this deliberately propagated (false) rumour. A British Lord by the name of Lord Ozwell E. Spencer was fascinated in particular by the folklore recorded within the book of the Ndipaya tribe – an advanced civilization of architects who zealously safeguarded the ancient ruins of the vanished Ndipaya Kingdom.
There was an interesting method to the way the Ndipaya Kingdom in its heyday would decide who was to rule their kingdom. In the Ndipaya monarchy, a king was not decided by birthright, but by the abilities and qualities he displayed during a certain mandatory ceremony. In this ceremony, the would-be King would consume a special plant that grew in the Sun Garden. This garden resided in one of the deepest areas of the royal city (mostly underground ruins in the present day). ‘The Stairway To The Sun’, as the plant was dubbed, was known to be extremely poisonous, and its effects often killed those who consumed it. However, some apparently had an innate natural resistance to the poison. The Ndipaya believed that one who could withstand the poisonous effects of the plant should have all the requirements necessary to rule as a King. Not many individuals survived this trial, but those that did were said to rule the kingdom for hundreds of years; apparently the plant gave them some form of life-enhancement or boost.
This account, of a plant giving kings certain life-enhancing benefits, piqued Spencer’s curiosity. He apparently envisioned a Huxleyian Brave New World where only people of certain inheritable (and desirable) traits were genetically augmented to produce superhumans, a society which he then would rule over as a King (or rather, God) – very much like one of the Controllers in the aforementioned book by Aldous Huxley. Evolution by force similar to how eugenicists and Social Darwinists envisioned it, then (also see Self-directed evolution / Social Darwinism) – with an elite at the top that must remain wild (as suggested by Charles Galton Darwin in The Next Million Years).
But to accomplish his goals, he would first have to retrieve this flower with the particular viral strain. Not an easy task to achieve, given that the ruins of the Ndipaya Kingdom were a secret to all but the local indigenous people and they guarded it with their very lives. However, this did not prevent Ozwell E. Spencer from excavating the mines in search of the ruins during the 1960s. The locals detested foreign companies of Umbrella’s ilk plundering their mines and flowers, and tried to fight back. Prior to doing battle, they would consume one of the particular flowers with the virus strain in it because it lent them extraordinary strength[1].
The Progenitor virus
In the 1979 James Bond movie Moonraker, villain Hugo Drax has modified a plant that caused sterility to the ancient Mayan civilization that paid reverence to it. After modification by Drax, it has become a poisonous plant that will kill human life instantly. (great care has been taken to ensure it only harms human life, not the environment or animals). Drax plans on launching fifty globes into space that will carry out the depopulation process. Once all human beings on Earth are dead, his hand-picked master race will repopulate the Earth. Resident Evil 5's Albert Wesker commits to a similar gameplan.
Despite constant run-ins with hostile Ndipaya tribesmen that ended in bloodshed, Spencer was ultimately successful in locating the fabled flower. The flowers seemed to contain some form of viral strain that gave the plant its potency. This trait, however, was ultimately borne out of the environment in which the flower was cultivated – the virus only developed inside the plant when it was grown inside the Ndipaya mines[2]. Because of this, Spencer was unable to grow the flowers for research purposes anywhere else in the world – hence, he couldn’t abandon the mines now that he got what he wanted. Because of this, it was necessary to set up shop permanently in the underground mines and build a research laboratory for further testing/exploration of the virus. Out of this flower his most prominent scientist – James Marcus – would develop the first manufactured virus, aptly dubbed Progenitor virus. This was to be the base for all future viruses developed by Spencer. It was at this stage in time that Spencer decides to create a corporation called Umbrella Corporation to give their unscrupulous research some cover.
The purpose of Umbrella was, in no uncertain terms, to function as a smokescreen to disguise the extensive pharmacological research that had gone into the development of these virus strains so far. (for instance, when Umbrella requested samples of the newly discovered Ebola virus, the reason given to the US government was that it wanted to develop a cure for the virus) At the same time that Spencer and co were developing viruses for use in bioweapon experiments dubbed ‘Biological Organism Weapon’, they were also busy marketing beneficial products to the end consumer to build brand awareness and a public veneer of respectability. Thus, to the consumer the Umbrella corporation was a benevolent pharmaceutical corporation dedicated towards keeping people healthy[3]. Some of these pharmaceutical products include the First-aid sprays that the player uses throughout the game (these can be found all over the place in the Resident Evil series and function as a health item, replenishing your depleted health meter).
There were some differences of opinion between the three founding members of Umbrella on what to do with the Progenitor virus; Edward Ashford apparently was more interested in potential beneficial uses of the virus, while Marcus and Spencer were specifically interested in developing biological weapons for military use. Even though Spencer and Marcus shared a common goal, Ozwell E. Spencer was a man known for keeping his cards close to his chest, and even this venture into bioweapon research proved to be no different. Access to the African division was highly restricted; only a few life-long members were allowed to enter the base where the Progenitor flowers were being cultivated, and unbeknownst to them they were constantly being monitored by Umbrella’s private military intelligence services. Those researchers who were left disillusioned by the project or caught wind of Spencer’s true business plan (his eugenic utopia) were to be disposed of[4]. No one except for Spencer was to know of the African division’s existence; not even Marcus was allowed to be in the know.
The Wesker Plan / Lebensborn
Fertile, unmarried and 'racially pure' women initiated into the Lebensborn program were allowed to mate with pure-blood Aryan men in order to breed the children of the future. The child would then be given to the SS organization which took charge of the child's education and adoption. Because Germany's birthrate was on the decline, this program was intended to increase the Germanic/Nordic population of Germany to 120 million. This fits to a tee Plato's Republic, where children will be raised by the state and will not know who their real parents are. To quote, 'These children will also not be randomly conceived. They will be bred deliberately to produce the best offspring, as though the Guardians were a pack of hunting dogs.'*
With Progenitor, Spencer finally sees his dream of a eugenics utopia becoming a real possibility. Immediately he kickstarts a positive eugenics program called the Wesker Plan. Dozens of children from parents with above-average intelligence were to be kidnapped by Umbrella (or a child trafficking service affiliated with it) and given the surname Wesker. Prior to reaching the age of 17, their character would be moulded by Spencer himself through a combination of scientific indoctrination and social engineering (in short: re-education). This was to ensure they would not turn against Spencer or his planned utopia when it would arise – Spencer could not afford any opposition to his plan, especially when it came to his chosen children who were to be part of the new master race[5].
The children were to be unknowingly monitored individually by Umbrella’s private intelligence services to track their progress as they went through the best colleges the world had to offer (courtesy of Umbrella, of course).
After the children reached adulthood, Spencer felt it necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff by administering each of the children a sample of the virus. To keep the Weskers in the dark as to what they were part of, a conscious decision was made not to force the intake of the inoculation on them, but to persuade them to take it by themselves (because Umbrella kept close tabs on their private lives, they could get to the Weskers’ inner circle of friends and get them to convince the Wesker in question he had to take this particular inoculation because it would benefit his health).
In Albert Wesker’s case, one of the few remaining survivors, it was his lifelong friend, William Birkin, who encouraged him to take the shot (at Umbrella’s behest, of course). Wesker had earlier impressed Spencer with his intellectual prowess to the extent that he had been allowed a prominent position at Umbrella’s Training Research Facility after his university graduation. He and Birkin would later spearhead the development of Umbrella’s most important virus strain since the Progenitor virus: the T-Virus (named after the Tyrant program developed simultaneously with the virus).
Spencer Mansion – B.O.W. development
A key design flaw of the Progenitor virus had always been its difficulty in bonding with its host’s DNA. To solve this problem, Marcus stumbled upon the idea of infecting a single-minded organism with the virus – in this case, a leech – that had but one purpose in life (to eat). This leech would then attach itself to another organism. In January 1978, James Marcus succeeded in creating the T-Virus by splicing leech DNA with the Progenitor virus. That same year he would also take two of his most prominent researchers under his wing: Albert Wesker and William Birkin. He would teach them to be responsible scientists while using his findings as a vehicle to gain a place on the company’s Board of Directors.
Spencer, however, had grown paranoid of Marcus’ prowess in the field of virology and closed the training facility where Marcus conducted his T-Virus research. This way he could conveniently isolate Marcus from the rest of the company (knowing he would stay there to continue research on the T-Virus due to his singleminded obsession with his creation) and limit his progress (without additional funding, Marcus would only be able to do so much). At the same time he took Marcus’ proteges, Birkin and Wesker, away from him and relocated them to the newly built Spencer Mansion to do further research on the T-Virus – Spencer apparently thought the two were far more loyally predisposed towards him than Marcus (also see Mansion Incident).
Repeated experiments wrought on Lisa have left her so horribly disfigured she has resorted to disguising her ugly hunchbacked and decomposed figure by wrapping human pieces of skin onto her body and face; for instance, the masks she wears are actually the faces she ripped off her impostor moms. She appears in the 2002 remake of Resident Evil 1 to flesh out the backstory. The Ebola virus she was infected with as an early experiment acts as the 'death-blocker' within her body - combine this with the T-Virus and Nemesis parasite and it means she can't be killed.
The Spencer Mansion (also known as the Arklay Research Facility internally; the estate was just a front to hide the research lab) had an ugly tale to tell. As far back as the late ’60s Spencer had commissioned an architect by the name of George Trevor to design a huge mansion located somewhere on the outskirts of Raccoon City. (as soon as the Progenitor virus had been developed, Spencer knew that his bioweapons experiments would require a sizeable testing ground) A number of traps, secret and unorthodox rooms were included into the design of the estate – such as an entire subterranean laboratory, a large water tank (where the Neptune BOW would be developed and tested) and a private residence adjacent to the Spencer estate (where various plant-related experiments would be conducted, such as the infamous Plant 42). Ultimately, it wasn’t until the very end (when the estate was completed) that George Trevor figured out that Spencer would dispose of him as soon as the estate was complete, so nobody would live to tell the tale of this strange architectural design with dozens of Indiana Jones-like entrapments and secret research labs. He was thrown into a secret compartment of the mansion where he would die a slow and mundane death (to add insult to injury, George Trevor wrote in his notes that, to his complete befuddlement, Spencer had a special gravestone dug specifically for him in the secret compartment of the mansion where they left him – which would suggest Spencer had incorporated George Trevor’s death into the design plan of the estate from the get go – and if he had paid better attention, he would have caught on to this sooner).
His wife and 14-year old daughter, meanwhile, were kidnapped by Umbrella and used as the first human test subjects for the Progenitor virus (Marcus had previously lamented in his journals that his non-human mammalian subjects were not getting him anywhere, and he wanted to test the virus on humans). Both were given a differing variation of the virus. Jessica (the mother)’s immune system could not fight off the virus, and Umbrella quickly disposed of her. Lisa proved more resilient; but repeated experiments left her grossly disfigured and her mental state permanently damaged.
One aspect of her past that remained intact was her attachment to her mother – she would frequently call out to her mother in despair. Because Umbrella had killed Jessica Trevor and Lisa’s inability to see her mother would result in extreme violent fits, it was necessary for Umbrella to hire several bodydoubles that would pay her a visit from time to time, this to give her a false sense of security in order to keep her docile. However, Lisa would quickly detect these women were not really her real mother, and violently kill them (in her journal, she describes the women as having the same face, but being ‘different inside’). She would rip off their faces and attach them to her own body. As her mental condition deteriorated even further as time went on, her only hope and solace was that she would one day meet her true mother again so that she could return her face to her.
In all, Lisa Trevor’s resistance to the various viruses she had been administered with (in no particular order, she had been injected with the Progenitor virus, the Ebola virus, the T-Virus, and even the Nemesis NE-Alpha Virus) laid the foundations for Birkin’s improved version of the T-Virus, the G-Virus. After the G-Virus’ completion, Lisa Trevor became a liability due to her uncontrollable violent urges. An attempt was made to kill her – but at this point the compounding viruses inside her body were blocking each other out (Ebola acted as a detterant to the T-Virus, for instance[9]) and it was near impossible for her to be killed.
Mansion Incident
The T-002 Tyrant program's purpose was to create supersoldiers fit for military use. A human guinea pig of extraordinary intelligence and with the right genetic makeup was injected with the T-Virus and experimented upon to produce the monstrosity seen in this picture. In Resident Evil 2 you encounter a mass-produced version of the Tyrant with no obvious weak spots (such as the protruding heart of this prototype) and a less monstrous appearance (thus able to function as an infiltration unit for the military - similar to the Terminator series' T-800 cyborgs).
James Marcus’ power struggle with Spencer would have severe repercussions on his moral and mental conduct as a scientist: he was increasingly becoming more paranoid about potential security breaches and moles purportedly sent by Spencer to steal his research (note that Marcus was one of the co-founders of Umbrella, and was probably well aware what Spencer had done to the Trevors shortly after they had outlived their usefulness).
Feeling he could trust his protégés, any fellow research scientist he distrusted or suspected of conspiring against him, he had liquidated by Wesker and Birkin (these two had previously proven to be quite the ruthless bunch judging by how they treated Lisa Trevor). Some even found themselves unexpectedly “assisting” in his research – as live human guinea pigs, that is. He began to develop a morbid fawning adoration for the ‘leeches’ he used to develop the T-Virus – even referring to his human test subjects (most of them ending up as zombies) as his ‘leeches’.
In 1988, exactly a decade after Marcus first invented the T-Virus project, Spencer decided he had enough of him and ordered Marcus’ subordinates, Wesker and Birkin, to assassinate their master. With Marcus dead, the aforementioned duo would then steal his research and move onto the next phase of experimentation – the supersoldier project, B.O.W. Tyrant.
The T-001 Tyrant developed at the Training facility under Marcus’ watch had always been intended for the scrapheap from the get go; its followup, the T-002, had to be more cost-efficient in terms of finding a suitable host, contain less physical weak spots and still exhibit some modicum of intelligence. This was to be Wesker’s chief assignment for many years.
Meanwhile, Spencer had big plans for William Birkin, and in 1991 Umbrella begins construction of an expansive underground laboratory beneath Raccoon City (specifically intended for Birkin’s G-Virus research). Much to Wesker’s surprise, Spencer approves Birkin’s unproven and highly unstable G-Virus project. Wesker is beginning to get nagging doubts about Spencer’s true intentions; feeling he first needs to dig up as much information on Spencer’s background as he can, he requests to be transferred to the Information Department, away from Birkin. Clandestine meetings begin with Raccoon City Police Chief Brian Irons and Umbrella; Umbrella shows some goodwill and puts up some funds for the refurbishment of several badly needed facilities inside the city, such as the General Hospital and City Hall.
The Hunter (below) is a BOW created by combining reptilian DNA with a human embryo and then administering the T-Virus as a bonding agent. How far-fetched is the concept of using chimeras for the military? Consider this: inspired by eugenics and Social Darwinism, the USSR set out to prove that Darwinism had superseded religion. Stalin was especially interested in the idea of creating half-human/half-ape hybrids for use in his military**. This new race would be a likely candidate for the fabled Soviet superman - the Holy Grail of the Soviet Union. For political reasons, however, the Soviet Union would later ban all research pertaining to eugenics/genetics - as this was Nazi-Germany's forte, it was declared a 'burgeois pseudoscience'.
A smart move on Wesker’s part is to start his own military apparatus with himself as Captain of the team. To accomplish this, he approaches the Raccoon City Police Department in 1996 with the proposition to set up an elite team of mercenaries known as the S.T.A.R.S. team. Wesker handpicks highly suitable members for inclusion into the team; two of which include Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine (the first game’s two main characters).
In 1998, an unforeseen event catches Umbrella by surprise: defying the laws of nature, the deceased James Marcus has been resurrected from the death. Looking about 20 years younger, he exacts revenge on the company that betrayed him. A large-scale viral leak occurs at the Spencer mansion. B.O.W.s such as the Cerberus (a T-Virus mutated dog) are running amok all over the place and claiming casualties.
This draws the authorities in. Wishing to put to rest claims of cannibalism and mysterious deaths in the Arklay Mountains, they put the Racoon City police on the job – which again delegates the mission to its newly formed S.T.A.R.S. team. Here is where the player comes in. Wesker’s strategic gamble paid off – as Captain of the team, he is able to control the investigation to the degree that it will not upset any future research.
Oblivious to Chris and Jill, Wesker was leading his team members down a rabbit trail. As team leader, he ordered them around the mansion, released BOWs into the mansion and then ran off and waited to see if the STARS members survived the attack. If they did, he would establish contact with them again, suggest a rendezvous point, and then release new monsters again. Chris and Jill were thus unwitting guinea pigs for the BOWs. Wesker’s mission was to compile battle data gathered from Chris and Jill’s fights against the BOWs (which included massively enlarged mutations of Tarantulas, snakes, Dobermans, sharks, etc) and then sell the data to a competing pharmaceutical company – while at the same time diverting Chris and Jill from the mansion’s true history for long enough until they were eventually killed by one of the bioweapons.
This pattern of deception continued to repeat itself until Chris and Jill grew ever more suspicious of Wesker’s erratic behaviour – running off at times leaving the team members to fend for themselves and exploring far-off locations of the mansion without informing his team beforehand.
Eventually it was revealed that Barry Burton – one of the team members – had been blackmailed into cooperating with Wesker. Having them at gunpoint, Wesker insists they join him in witnesssing the birth of his crowning achievement, the T-002 Tyrant. This was supposed to be the culmination of Wesker and Birkin’s decade-long experiments with the T-Virus – a humanoid supersoldier with a claw for an arm, superhuman strength and an exposed protruding heart. Its capacity to follow orders would make it ideally suited for military purposes. Finding a research subject for the Tyrant program proved extraordinarily difficult for Birkin and Wesker because of the previously mentioned limitations of the T-Virus – the virus had a very low compatibility rate (1/100.000.000) and required a human test subject of superior intelligence and the right genetic makeup. On any lesser gifted subject, the result would be a rapid deteroriation of the mental faculties, rapid decomposition of the skin and an insatiable bloodlust. In short, a slow-moving zombie would be the outcome – not of much use as a military-purpose bioweapon. The Tyrant would also have to retain some of his intelligence – but not to the extent that he would hesitate following orders when instructed to do so.
Viral outbreak in city
William Birkin in his original form (above) and after intake of the G-Virus (one of the several forms he will undertake due to the continuous mutagenic properties of the virus).
Fortunately for Chris and Jill, the Tyrant, while quite effective as a bioweapon, could not withstand the direct blast of a standard-issue rocket launcher. Ultimately, while the Mansion incident was quite the setback for Umbrella, the damage incurred was within acceptable limits. Because the Spencer mansion was destroyed by a self-destruct mechanism, all evidence implicating Umbrella in the illegitimate research had been destroyed. Chris and Jill, having experienced an almost traumatic experience back at the mansion, were determined to bring about the downfall of Umbrella. Unfortunately, their claims were so incredulous nobody could take them seriously. Neither the US government or the Raccoon City police department where they worked were interested in pursuing a further investigation of Umbrella. (of course, it should not be forgotten that Umbrella had regular business dealings with the police department – and could exert its weight/influence on the department from time to time if a major-scale investigation was to be initiated)
At the same time as Jill and Chris were fruitlessly trying to get the authorities to clamp down on Umbrella, William Birkin had just completed development of the G-Virus. This highly improved version of the Progenitor virus with continuous mutagenic properties (basically, what this means is that the virus is constantly mutating the DNA of the organism with). Whether this can be chalked up due to his ego or perhaps a misplaced faith in Spencer, what Birkin didn’t realize was that he would ultimately be just as expendable to Umbrella as the next prominent scientist. Like Marcus, he wanted to use his research to propel himself to an executive board position inside the company. There were also disagreements between him and his superiors on ownership issues – Birkin, being quite the technocrat, had learned to love his mutagenic baby more than his wife/fellow scientist or his daughter. He is the personification of what Jacques Ellul termed the ultimate technocrat – the kind that would be more concerned about the efficiency of the lethal gas chambers inside the concentration camps than the fate shared by those inside them. When Umbrella learned that he planned to sell his virus to the US government, they decided to pull the plug on him, literally – a special mercenary unit was deployed to the Underground facilities to take him out and retrieve his research.
Birkin, sensing such a symbiotic bond between him and his virus that he wished to taste its DNA-enhancing strength, injected himself with it. During a violent confrontation with the mercenary unit, a vial containing the T-Virus was smashed and ingested by rats. Like the Black Death, then, these rats had the honor of transmitting the virus to the human population living above the sewage (called a ‘carrier’ in medicine)
Rockfort Island
Rockfort Island is a private island owned by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella Corporation. It houses both an illegal prison camp and a para-military training facility (where mercenaries such as HUNK were trained and instructed for black-ops operations). It is administered by Alfred Ashford, heir to the Ashford family in Alexia’s absence.
Alexia Ashford’s ant colony utopia
Clipping the wings of a dragonfly and dropping it into a vase littered with ants that feast themselves on the hapless thing gets these two Ashford designer twin siblings all romantically aroused. Decadency, a mutual disdain for the 'unwashed', an unshakeable conviction in the superiority of their genes and their desire to impose their 'anthill societal planning' ideas onto the rest of humanity all serve to underline the aristocratic fear of 'losing it all' and joining those 'lower ranks' again - the 'feebleminded' commoners that serve to be the prey of the 'fittest' - yet despite all the grand theories and ideas, their definition of 'fit' does not always correlate with reality.
When Edward Ashford, one of the three founders of Umbrella Corporation, died due to contracting the Progenitor virus himself, the baton was passed to Lord Alexander Ashford, his son. Although a gifted geneticist/virologist, he had tarnished much of the family’s reputation and good name in his youth – which Spencer cheaply exploited to consolidate his own power over the company. With Edward died, it was clear that Spencer was calling the shots from now on.
This didn’t deter Spencer from still employing Alexander as a scientist at Rockfort Island. There he came upon the discovery of the gene regulating human intelligence. It’s implied in one of Resident Evil: Code Veronica’s journals that Alexander was sterile, which might explain why his two children were not the product of natural conception, but rather that of artificial insemination. Because he had already hit upon the intelligence gene, his idea was simply to take a sample from the rotten carcass of the family’s matriarch, Veronica Ashford (who was known for her extreme beauty and intelligence) and infuse that with the intelligence gene to produce ’superior twin siblings’: Alfred and Alexia.
These blond-haired, blue-eyed specimens (as was much of the Ashford family’s lineage, it must be interjected) both benefited from genius levels of intelligence, but as always there was a dominant sibling: Alfred exhibited only low-level genius intelligence, while Alexia had received the lion’s share of intelligence quotas. At the age of 10 she graduated from university and was able to start her own virus research experiments – all with the backing of the Umbrella Corporation of course. She and William Birkin would develop an intense rivalry despite both of them never actually meeting each other in person (Birkin being located at the USA Raccoon City branch and Alexia at the Antarctic Research Facility).
Alexia’s extraordinarily high intelligence had quite the sway on her pre-adolescent development: a extremely isolated, very egotistical, and self-centered young girl. But above all, what was most apparent about her (and this includes her lesser-gifted brother as well) was her extreme disdain for what she termed the ‘unwashed’, the ‘masses’. The only one she could relate to happened to be her slightly lesser mentally-gifted brother Alfred; in certain cutscenes you can almost see the two sharing a kiss while studying ants in a receptacle eating a wingless dragonfly. Later on in the game, when you uncover the secret private resort Alfred had built for his beloved sister Alexia, two paper cut-outs on a music box can be seen resembling Alfred and Alexia – again, they share a kiss, and it doesn’t seem to be of the brother/sisterly love kind). Incest is suggested but never overly implied – the Japanese have this unspoken rule of ’show but don’t tell’ when it comes to these things.
Alexia likened the vast majority of people to ‘ants’ – in one of her scientific journals she impassionately writes about ant colonies where the queen ant rules all the lesser ants, and how this would be a great societal system to apply to the human race:
“After discovering the remains of an ancient virus within the genes of a queen ant, I have been concentrating on the research of ants.
The ecosystem of the ants seems truly ideal to me. There is one queen ant in each anthill, and the soldier and worker ants are the queen’s slaves. They dedicate their lives to the queen.
The death of the queen ant means the doom of the entire anthill. However, the soldier and worker ants can be easily replaced as long as the queen ant is alive. This is exactly the same relationship between myself and the other ignorant masses[6].
I have succeeded in creating an ideal virus by implanting the queen ant’s gene into the mother virus that Spencer found.” – Alexia Ashford, Resident Evil: Code Veronica
Dubbing her creation the ‘T-Veronica virus’ (named after the matriarch of the family, and the one she resembles most by virtue of her DNA), the first test subject she uses it on happens to be her father – whom she has despised ever since she and her brother became privy to the fact they were not naturally conceived. The test is a failure and complete mental deterioration of the brain ensues – which prompts Alexia and Ashford to lock him up in an isolated prison room indefinitely. Based on Alexia’s calculations, it takes the body at least 15 years in cryogenic sleep to adapt to the virus – so at the tender age of 10, she injects herself with the virus and enters into her cryogenic vault to be awakened 15 years later. In the meantime, Alfred – at the age of 12 – as her soldier ant, is meant to take care of family business matters.
At the age of 12, the self-centered and arrogant Alexia Ashford hits upon the idea that humanity would be more to her liking if it could be made to resemble the anthill. As a queen ant in this ant colony she would then rule over all the lesser ants. These lesser ants fall into two categories: the 'soldier' ants (her brother, Alfred, is classified by Alexia as her 'soldier ant') and the 'worker' ants (basically the 'ignorant masses' Alexia despises).
The absence of Alexia takes its toll on Alfred psychologically. Already unbalanced as he was, he now develops sadistic tendencies that he acts out on the inmates of the prison from time to time (even going so far as to join a fellow Dr.Mengele-like scientist in his macabre Inquisition-style torture sessions), but above all he can’t deal with the love of his life – his sister – being gone. Like Norman Bates in Psycho who can’t psychologically deal with the fact that his mother is dead, Alfred develops a split personality – one half remaining his fragile self while the other is occupied by Alexia as best as he could remember her. He keeps up this illusion to himself by dressing up as her, applying lipstick to his face and putting on Victorian era-esque clothes befitting of a Lady. His already effeminate voice helps him emulate the voice of a woman – and this charade he puts on for the sake of his fragile mental state of mind is so convincing he even has the fellow inhabitants of the island convinced there is an ‘Alexia’ on the island that regularly meets with her brother. (in reality, he’s just a ‘cross-dressing freak’, in Claire Redfield’s own words)
But exactly 15 years have passed since dear Alexia was put into a cryogenic chamber, and it’s about time Alfred gave up this schizophrenic illusion and re-awaken her from her sleep. But Alfred doesn’t live to see his dear fair lady again – he dies in front of the cryogenic chamber while putting her out of the vault.
Alexia, meanwhile, still sees herself as this ruthless, uncompromising queen ant that has a birthright to rule all of humanity as her slaves:
And the “T-Veronica” virus will be unleashed upon the entire world by my children. Every last creature on Earth will exist to serve me.
At that time, the world will achieve the perfect ecosystem, just like the anthill, but on a much grander scale.” – Alexia Ashford, Resident Evil: Code Veronica
While it was unfortunate Alfred died, to her mind he was ultimately just a “soldier ant”, and they are expandable as she pontificated earlier. She never loses her eugenic streak either: still showing this disdain for anyone not remotely up to her intellectual standards, she taunts Chris and Claire during a boss fight with the zinger: “It’s almost time you genetically inferior siblings”.
Umbrella folds amid government crackdown
Racoon City gets destroyed with tactical missile strikes by the US military. Spencer comments in his journal: 'While the danger posed by the threat of the T-Virus spreading was very real, I don't think Americans will easily forgive their government for the deaths of over 100,00 of their own people.'
The virus outbreak in Raccoon City forced the US government’s hand: after failing to contain the threat, they destroyed the city using tactical missile strikes to prevent the virus from spreading into other cities/states. With Umbrella’s research experiments resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians, this time the company found itself backed against a corner. As Spencer wrote in his journal:
“If the truth of this matter is ever brought to light, support for the current administration will plummet. I don’t think he wants that. Even a child can see that they will come after Umbrella with everything they have. To hide their own foolish mistakes, they will blame Umbrella for Raccoon City’s annihilation.”
But Spencer had a plan. He could care less if the company would fold, as by his own admission it was nothing more than a tool for the research of the Progenitor virus. Spencer’s priority now was in safeguarding the company’s secret research formulas involving the Progenitor virus. The African research facility had always remained a secret to all but the employees he had working at that specific branch (its director, Bailey, for instance, had worked there exclusively for 30 years).
Now he had to shut down the African facility, so that it could no longer be linked to Umbrella. Then, a purge of Stalin-esque proportions would ensue – everyone with Level 10 security clearance would have to be eliminated. As he puts it, “When one buries a treasure, one should not leave behind a map.”
Several incriminating lawsuits were filed against Umbrella for their involvement in the incident. Several revelations surfaced during the trials: first, Umbrella acquired stock medicines and techniques by other companies and employed them in their own bioweapons research. Second, and even more troubling for every pharmaceutical company that had done business with Umbrella, it had commissioned them to only partially develop certain medications so that no trace could be established to what was ultimately being developed. This made all of Umbrella’s affiliates essentially accessories to the crime.
The Global Pharmaceutical Consortium, of which Umbrella and Tricell are/were a part of, was hit hardest. Facing a government crackdown that would leave nothing of the business, the consortium decided to play ball with the prosecutors. Their proposition to the prosecutors was that it would agree to asssist with the case against Umbrella, and would turn over all its internal company documentation relating to the case. In return, the prosecutors would leave the consortium alone. This they could agree on. In 2003, Umbrella was found guilty of all charges, and shortly thereafter stock prices plummeted and the company was bankrupt. Spencer, meanwhile, facing criminal charges, had to go into hiding – retreating to his European estate which was situated along the coast of an undisclosed ocean. To all intents and purposes, Spencer had been successful in safeguarding his crown jewel, the virus, research laboratory and the cultivation process itself. But his stated intent to rule over a new socially planned world of biologically enhanced humans was beginning to look like a distant dream – he himself had to be kept on life support and was quickly approaching his own mortality.
Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA)
Umbrella’s dissolvency had unintended ripple effects. All around the world black-ops Umbrella BOWs began to appear on the black market and were sold to the highest bidder – mostly to terrorist organizations and “unstable” governments. This new age of ‘bioterrorism’ calls for the creation of a multi-jurisdictional taskforce that is able to deploy anywhere in the world in a very short timeframe. To this end the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance was created, funded almost wholly by the Global Pharmaceutical Consortium. (which acts as much-needed PR for the badly-damaged pharma industry in general)
Because the BSAA enjoys the United Nations‘ official nod of approval, all its member states have agreed to let the task force across its borders – though some remain skeptical of the organizations’ ties with the pharmaceutical conglomerate (mostly because Umbrella had left such a bad mark on pharma companies worldwide). A thorny issue that may incur it the legal wrath of a particular nationstate is that it sometimes has to go beyond its jurisdiction to carry out their missions. A special department known as Special Operations Agents (SOA) are deployed to do exactly that. Chris Redfield is such an agent – he is essentially a Dirty Harry-type figure who, although showing restraints, is told in no uncertain terms to ‘contain the threat’, and that his orders still stand whatever the cost – and that may include engaging locals. (oddly, Sheva Alomar at no point protests to Chris or the other members of the BSAA that they are needlessly slaughtering a good part of her fellow countrymen/women – perhaps she figures the situation calls for extraordinary measures, and the infected are beyond treatment in any case).
Tricell, pt. 2
With Umbrella finished, a great many competing pharmaceutical organizations found themselves compelled to pick up where the disgraced company left off (nature abhors a vacuum, after all). Foremost among these is Tricell – and due to the proliferation of Umbrella BOWs onto the black market, it wastes no time in inserting its tentacles into the bioweapons market.
Reopening of Umbrella’s African research site
Excella as CEO of Tricell Africa is basically a pawn of Wesker. She has begun to think alongside the same Social Darwinist lines as her mentor and love interest - the idea of evolution being forced upon man through viral infection appealing immensely to her - moreso when she begins to tinker with the idea of becoming a Queen in the coming 'new world'.
Wesker saw to it that Ozwell S. Spencer did not carry his secret into the grave. By digging through Spencer’s old archives he came across evidence of the African research site’s existence. Conveniently, Spencer had already eliminated all research personnel aware of the African site, so with the founder gone it was effectively abandoned and only had to be reopened by someone fortunate enough to find it.
Seeing as Umbrella had been dissolved, Wesker realized he now needed a pharma company of equal stature in order to develop the Uroboros Project. To solve this conundrum he would prop up Tricell Africa by approaching one of its high-ranking employers, Excella Gionne, and giving her access to Umbrella’s vast collection of biological agents. Excella had a background in genetic engineering, so this obviously was exciting stuff to her. The thought had been developing in her mind ever since Umbrella was closed that Tricell ought to broaden its horizons and expand its business to include biological weapons research.
Through all sorts of political shenagigans she managed to become CEO of Tricell Africa, effectively becoming a tool for Wesker. Immediately he indirectly commisioned her to reopen the Umbrella African research site. This was essential in order to cultivate the flowers with the viral strain that was at the core of the bioweapons development process.
New viruses
Tricell would pick up where Umbrella left off in its search for the ultimate biological viral agent. Since Wesker had already obtained a sample of the Las Plagas virus (Resident Evil 4) through his proxy agent Ada Wong, it was a shame to let it go to waste – especially since Uroboros was still in its infancy and far too poisonous for the average human to be of any practical use.
Las Plagas 2
There were certain aspects of Las Plagas’ functionality that Tricell didn’t like. First of all, the incubation rate took too long – it would take several days before the egg inside the host subject’s body would hatch and take over its nervous system. Secondly, there was the issue of control. In Resident Evil 4, there were two classes of Plaga: there was the Control Plaga (examples of these include: the boss Ramon Salazar and Osmund Saddler in Resident Evil 4) that were basically in control of the lower Plaga like a queen bee ruling the beehive. This came at great personal cost to the user, however – by injecting themselves with a control Plaga, the user lost his human likenesses and turned into a halfway house between a grotesque freak and a human (this was the reason why Bitores Mendez wore a long trenchcoat – to hide his insect-like torso). This was not desirable for Tricell from a pure business perspective – Las Plagas subjects had to be able to function independently as supersoldiers. An enhanced form was developed, dubbed simply Las Plagas 2.
Unlike the predecessor first seen in Resident Evil 4, this new virus is ingested orally by the user. Given that the virus resembles some sort of repulsive parasitic slug, the user obviously has to be forced against his will to take it (the first Majini encountered in the game is first restrained then forced against his will to eat it). The incubation rate is almost instant – ranging from anywhere between 0 to 5 seconds.
Ricardo Irving is a materialist yuppie who oversees the local oil refinery owned wholesale by Tricell Africa’s Resource Development Department. Working on the side for Tricell as a bioweapons smuggler/dealer, he was supposed to be cutting a business deal with an undisclosed third party inside the Kijuju mines – but word of this deal was leaked to the BSAA. Sensing that he was being hunted down and needing a contingency plan to cover his tracks, he spreads the Las Plagas 2 virus amongst the population to keep Chris pre-occupied and always a step behind. These bioweapon sales struck by Irving are meant to fill the coffers of Tricell, which is strapped for cash as it is to fund all these R&D projects into bioweapons (unlike Umbrella, there’s no wealthy British Lord with a fortune to play the part of the proverbial sugar daddy).
Irving’s Achilles heel is that he takes too many chances and wastes too many of his chess pieces in an attempt to kill his assailants (Chris and Sheva). For instance, he turns at least two valuable BOWs loose on the team (a financial loss for Tricell and Irving seeing as they didn’t get sold) – the first is a BOW bat-type creature and the second an improved version of El Gigante first seen in Resident Evil 4. When Irving is backed into a corner, Jill (hooded for the remainder of the game) comes to the rescue to pull him out of the mud. When Irving has exhausted all his options and is considering abandoning Tricell, stealing their remaining BOW and selling it off, Jill pays Irving a visit again and offers him a sample of a Las Plagas 2 Control Plaga as a form of ultimate punishment for his failure to deal with the situation.
Las Plagas 3
Tricell deliberately spreads the virus inside Africa so that the zombified hordes can engage the BSAA operatives - meanwhile observing the spectacle and counting the casualty/infection rate. The virus is meant to be taken by ingesting the fully developed parasite orally - here a hapless African is forced to swallow it.
For the followup product to Las Plagas 2, Tricell wanted to create a new standard on the bioweapons market. It felt practical from an economical point of view to continue development of Las Plagas-based viruses, given the affinity it has for human hosts.
The Ndipaya tribesmen located in the vicinity of the Tricell/Umbrella research site would serve as the cannon fodder for this improved version of the Las Plagas 2 parasite (or lab rats, if you may). First by persuasion, then by force, they were approached to take an inoculation that would protect them against some form of disease. One of the teenagers in the village would be proven right in distrusting the doctors’ intentions, as the ‘cure’ they were given was actually the virus. In his journal, he writes:
“VILLAGE YOUTH’S DIARY”
“A man who said he was the foreman of the oil plant came to visit us today. He said he wants to inoculate everyone living near the oil field against some kind of disease.
Everyone in our village is glad to receive this medicine, but I don’t want it. I don’t have a reason for not getting it, I just didn’t like the way the foreman looks, that’s all.
It then goes on to tell us the effects this experimental Las Plagas virus had on their tribe. The virus had a 0% adherence rate with women and children – they were the first to die. The men, however, had a 92% adherence rate – jumping skills were greatly improved and on some specimens their stature rose to an incredible three meters. Overall, while not achieving all of Tricell’s estimated results, in its “Type 3 Plagas Field Test” it regards it as a laudable dry run:
“TYPE 3 PLAGAS FIELD TEST”
“With this field test, we did not achieve all our initial desired results, but the test was not a complete failure. It may be possible to use the information garnered from the current tests and use them to make improvements in any future tests.”
Once again, Tricell as Umbrella reincarnated shows some cunning malicious forethought – because the Ndipaya would undoubtedly react hostile to the idea of another pharmaceutical company reactivating Umbrella’s activities on their land, top priority was given to contain the threat posed by the tribesmen. What better way than to infect them with a virus, and simultaneously being able to use them as participants in a field test? It’s like killing two birds with one stone.
Wesker’s Uroboros Project
“I was to become a god! Creating a new world, with an advanced race of human beings…however, all was lost with Raccoon City… Despite that setback, your creation still holds great significance…
Now my candle burns dimly! Ironic, isn’t it? For one who has the right to be a god! To face his own mortality…” – Ozwell E. Spencer, Resident Evil 5 [Youtube]
In The Chrysopoeia of Kleopatra, a picture of the Ouroboros (above left) is enclosed with the caption: 'All is one'. If Ouroboros represents the lifecycle of all life on the Earth, then the Uroboros virus will upset that lifecycle irreparably. Another explanation for the symbol that fits into the storyline: the circle represents the perfection of the soul, with the raw material and end product consisting of a human being. . It would thus appear that Wesker
Ouroboros – the namesake of Wesker’s Uroboros Project, is an occult symbol depicting a dragon eating its own tail. Throughout history, it has been used by various secret societies – including Count Dracula’s Order Of The Dragon, the Theosophical Society and Freemasonry (also see Ouroboros in popular culture).
A possible explanation of its meaning can be found in ancient Greek alchemy. From Answers.com’s article on the subject:
“In alchemy, the tail-eating dragon represented the guardian of mystical treasure, symbolized by the sun. Alchemy was to destroy or dissolve this guardian as a stage towards knowledge of this treasure.”
The tail-eating dragon is the guardian of the mystical treasure – which in this case would be the secrets or ultimate potential of the Stairway To The Sun, the flower jealously guarded by the Ndipaya tribe. Albert Wesker plays the part of the alchemist/scientist that intends to slay this dragon in order to retrieve the treasure – the flower – and tap its viral power to its full potential.
Ouroboros is also said to represent the cycle of life and death. Wesker intends to use the Uroboros virus as a powerful tool to ’separate’ the wheat from the chaff – to him, only those with superior genes will be allowed into his ‘new world’, and invariably those people’s DNA will be able to bond with the virus and lent them greater powers. The rest (the ‘bottom tenth’ used by American eugenicists is now more like ‘the bottom ninety-five’ will simply ‘exist to be eaten’ by the leeches spawned by the Uroboros virus.
As a bioweapon / virus
The Uroboros virus requires a perfect genetic makeup (like the T-Virus and Progenitor virus before it, then) – if the virus cannot bond with the hosts’ DNA, it starts devouring its surrounding environment. Wesker and Excella blame this low compatibility rate on the hosts’ genes – Wesker says in no uncertain terms that a person’s ability to bond with Uroboros succcessfully (that is, not to turn into a formless heap of jelly but instead keep his physical body in equilibrium with the virus) demonstrates that person’s worthiness to join his ‘new world’ – for he has proven to have superior DNA[7].
“Only those with superior DNA will be chosen by Uroboros. Only those fit for survival will be allowed to carry their genes into a new age!” – Albert Wesker, Resident Evil 5[Youtube]
But this twisted logic ultimately would come back to haunt one of its adherents. When Excella is doublecrossed by Wesker and injected with the Uroboros virus herself, she too is turned into a formless blob instead of the desired effect. “Sorry, Excella”, remarks Wesker matter-of-factly upon seeing wormlike tentacles surrounding her body, “it appears Uroboros has rejected you”. Thus, for all of Excella’s talk of certain people being more worthy than others, she too would not measure up to her own highly selective standards[8].
Jill as a test subject
Jill's disguise outfit (above left) juxtaposed with a Black Death plague doctor (above right); (below) the combined effect of the T-Virus' state of dormancy and the extraction of the antibodies inside her body has rendered Jill's skin paler and turned her hair from brunette to blonde. In her battlesuit she resembles the perfect Aryan supersoldier stereotype that seemed to be at the crux of the Wesker Plan.
After the events in Umbrella Chronicles, Jill was presumed dead despite no body ever being found by either the BSAA or Chris himself. In reality, the badly wounded Jill was dragged by Wesker to his hiding place, where he tended to her wounds and put her into a cryogenic chamber for safekeeping. Wesker intended to use her as his first test subject for the work-in-progress Uroboros virus.
What ultimately spared Jill the ill fortune of becoming the next Lisa Trevor (see Spencer Mansion – B.O.W. Development) was her unusual medical condition. Apparently a remnant of the T-Virus was still inside her body and had been suddenly reactivated while she was in cryogenic slumber. Wesker at first tried to remove the virus from her body wholesale through pharmacological means, but all this accomplished was to put the virus into a state of dormancy.
Suddenly something unexpected happened: not only did the T-Virus inside her body disappear, but in its absence it left powerful antibodies against the T-Virus and other like viruses[9].
Wesker saw an opportunity here to use these antibodies to create a more generally applicable version of the Uroboros virus – a less poisonous version increasing the chances of a human test subject surviving infection. He proceeded to experiment on her further and was successful in extracting the antibodies from her body and applying it to the Uroboros virus.
Enduring all these experiments had forced Jill’s immune system to become highly resistant to the Uroboros virus and other Progenitor-based strains, which entailed Jill would prove useless to Wesker as a future test subject for the Uroboros virus. However, rather than disposing of her after she had served her purpose, Wesker foresaw another application for Jill – a programmable supersoldier using a performance enhancing drug. This performance enhancer was a chemical developed during the days of the Progenitor and T-Virus, called P30 (Progenitor 30).
Its downside was that it had a very short duration rate and so had to be continually readministered lest the subject lose his/her extraordinary powers. To solve this administrative inconvenience, Wesker had a device attached to Jill’s chest that continually readministered doses of P30 when supply in her bloodstream ran low[10]. Keeping Jill continually drugged on what basically amounted to psychostimulants (think Ritalin rather than dope) meant Jill’s mental faculties were severely repressed; leaving her with no choice but to slavishly follow Wesker’s orders.
Jill’s hair became a light blond color due to the extraction of antibodies, and her skin became pale due to lack of sunlight exposure (after all, not only was she disguised as a 17th century plague doctor while overseeing Irving’s bioweapons deals[11], but it’s likely most of her time was spent in the Ndipaya ruins). In keeping with the Aryan supremacy ideology Spencer/Wesker seem to be pushing for, this, combined with the militaristic battlesuit, had the aesthetic side effect of turning her into a personification of the idealized Aryan supersoldier. Heinrich Himmler would have certainly approved, were it not he was only interested in men as soldiers rather than women – who belonged in the kitchen.
Self-directed evolution / Social Darwinism
“Six billion cries of agony will birth the new balance. Unfortunately, you will not live to see the dawn.” – Albert Wesker, Resident Evil 5[Youtube]
The ‘new balance’ quoted by the villain of the game, Albert Wesker, is similar to Adolf Hitler’s ‘New Order’ as it was referenced at the time. Hitler’s eugenics program was among the most highly developed in the world[12]. Its aim: to create and maintain a superior Aryan/Nordic race while routing out all the ‘inferior’ ethnicities/subraces. If Hitler were to have succeeded, society would have looked like a global caste system very similar to that practiced in India. But these weren’t just the dangerous musings of a single madman. Major Leonard Darwin, one of Charles Darwin’s sons and notably President of the First International Congress of Eugenics, saw the need for a similar future world, which, in his own words, would be ’so rigid as to prohibit all movement between the different social strata in order to remedy the harm done by educational facilities generally”. Of course, for the average Joe there’s the problem of having to justify your existence by virtue of your genetic makeup or inheritable traits – or, on a more sociological level, tendency towards anti-social behavior. Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once told an audience that people would have to justify their existence in front of a eugenics court[14].
What these men (and the odd woman) all had in common was that they considered themselves part of a worldwide international science known as eugenics. Their argument was that humanity needed to be guided towards its next evolutionary end, and this could only be accomplished if racial intermingling between those of superior breed and inferior breed were to cease all together. The endgoal was to create an army of ’supermen’ – a superior Nordic/post-Aryan society replacing the old.
Wesker’s musings about his ‘brave new world’ is a heady mix of environmentalist doctrine mixed with age-old racial hygiene/eugenics rhetoric.
“Has it never occurred to you that this planet is overpopulated? Only a handful of humans truly matter.” – Albert Wesker, Resident Evil 5[Youtube]
Thomas Malthus was the first who cried wolf over a diminishing food supply if the population were to grow too fast. By observing the tendency of plants and animals to produce far more offspring than they could sustain, Malthus then argued in his Essay On The Principles of Population (1798) that the same could hold true for Man – and that families should be regulated in size to combat this doomsday scenario. Charles Darwin then developed his theory on evolution from Malthus‘ work. Out of all this arose Herbert Spencer’s ’survival of the fittest’ concept – that in nature, only the fittest organisms survived.
What Malthus considered to be the destructive factor in all this were so-called charitable organizations which tended to the weak. Instead, the weak should be allowed to die off.
“Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.” – Thomas Malthus
Social planners then ran with the whole concept under the banner ‘Social Darwinism’/'eugenics’. Francis Galton, widely considered to be the father of eugenics, suggested that eugenics should be pushed as a creed, a new religion:
“It must be introduced into the national conscience, like a new religion. It has, indeed, strong claims to become an orthodox religious, tenet of the future, for eugenics co-operate with the workings of nature by securing that humanity shall be represented by the fittest races. What nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly.” – Francis Galton, The American Journal Of Sociology, July 1904
It should be noted that the environmentalist crowd has plenty of Malthusian groups dedicated solely to the concept of overpopulation (Carrying Capacity Network, Population-Environment Balance, Optimum Population Trust).
Another Wesker quote points to a different clique that was formerly aligned with eugenics:
Only a handful of humans truly matter. Everyone else is just so much chaff. And now I have to separate this wheat from the chaff.” – Albert Wesker, Resident Evil 5[Youtube]
Wesker has obviously been reading up on Margaret Sanger. This notorious birth control advocate openly referred to people as ‘weeds’ and was of the opinion that as much as 70% of the US population suffered from ‘feeblemindedness’ (a term heavily bantered about during the day; today, mental retardation would be a more popular term). She advocated mass sterilization and segregation to prevent the less desirable people from propagating their kind. All the while, she never refrained from using botanical terminology.
Feeblemindedness was ambigiously applied to any condition considered undesirable: poverty (commonly referred to at the time as pauperism), lewdness, prostitution, epilepsy, anti-social behavior, deformities; even the wrong looks or failing the highly flawed Stanford-Binet IQ tests could have led to you being termed as such. And in countries where compulsory sterilization laws were enacted, such as the United States and Nazi-Germany, forced sterilization would soon follow.
“Your feeble attempts only delay the inevitable. The entire world will be infected.” – Albert Wesker, Resident Evil 5[Youtube]
This is an interesting choice of words on the part of Albert Wesker. Chris Redfield is aimlessly trying to shoot at Albert Wesker. From Wesker’s perspective, Chris is inherently inferior because he has not been injected with the virus that has lent him his superhuman powers. Thus, Wesker’s line here could be construed as Wesker declaring Chris ‘feebleminded’ in the manner the eugenicists would have approved of.
“Why can’t you understand, Chris? Do you really believe the world is worth saving? Natural selection leaves the survivors stronger and better. Humans have escaped this winnowing for far too long.” – Albert Wesker, Resident Evil 5[Youtube]
In response to Wesker deeming that ‘the human race requires judgement!’[Youtube][14], Chris Redfield indignantly responds: “And you’re going to judge us? Do you get all your ideas from comic book villains?”.
No, Chris, he doesn’t get them from comic book villains. He gets them from the kind who are of the educated opinion human beings resemble fat maggots living in their own defecation, or judicial figures that want to limit the propagation of certain kinds of people ‘we don’t want to have too many of’. Or John Holdren, Obama science czar, proposing putting stuff in the water to sterilize the vast majority of the public, forced abortions and a ‘planetary regime’ to save ‘the planet’. The eugenics of today is not the same as it was when Francis Galton was still counting the density of ‘beautiful women/breeding stock’ in his country – today it has permeated into vast structures of our society and resulted in this confused mixture of genetic discrimination, Gaia-worshipping paganistic nature religions, and nationwide obsessions with Malthusian Five Year Plan reduction schemes. Wesker’s talk of overpopulation and ‘justify your existence’ George Bernard Shaw recitations are meant to emphasise the fact that he ‘has lost it’ – as Sheva Alomar puts it so bluntly. But in our daily reality it is not so easy to deem such people ‘nuts’, because these are more often than not men and women who represent altruism, concern for the environment, hold a doctorate position, or can claim to be a public servant pretending to represent the people’s will. Rhetoric, even of the dangerous, anti-humanist kind, can work even when flying in the face of reason.
Meaning behind words/names
Name/word Meaning Object BSAA Acronym for ‘Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance’, a multi-jurisdictional task force primarily funded by the Global Pharmaceutical Consortium and reformed under the Unted Nations’ jurisdiction. Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine now work for the BSAA. Acronym/Concept BOW Acronym for ‘Biological Organism Weapon’, the official term used throughout the series to denote a biological weapon. Usually a Frankenstein-like cross-species mutant manufactured by a pharmaceutical company or sold to terrorist organizations. Acronym/Concept T-Virus The successor to the Progenitor Virus – created by ’splicing’ leech DNA with the Progenitor virus. Used in Resident Evil 1. Concept Progenitor Virus The first virus developed from the Ndipaya’s Stairway To The Sun flowers – used as the base for every virus since Concept Umbrella Corporation Large multinational pharmaceutical company using the development of pharmaceutical products as a cover for the research and development of deadly bioweapons Character/Corporation General observations
Aryan selection process: Nearly all the chief researchers/leaders of Umbrella’s various branches are blond-haired, blue-eyed. It’s difficult to determine whether Ozwell E. Spencer fits the Aryan stereotype as well since we only get to see him at an elderly age, but the blue eyes are there, so the smart money is on yes.
Some examples: James Marcus, William Birkin, Annette Birkin, Sherry Birkin (not really an Umbrella employee but the daughter of the Birkins), Albert Wesker, Alexander Ashford, Alfred Ashford, and Alexia Ashford.
Wesker’s Social Darwinist streak: Wesker’s Social Darwinist mindset is established as far back as in the first Resident Evil (the 1996 original – that would be the one with the bad acting). Right before unleashing Tyrant, he tells Jill with a certain disdain:
“Don’t be upset. All weak people exist to be eaten.” – Albert Wesker, Resident Evil (1996)[Youtube]
Inbred/decadent aristocratic family: The Ashford family’s good name is ruined by Edward Ashford’s son and legitimate heir to the Ashford family, Alexander Ashford. Dear Alexander, being as obsessed with the idea of eugenics as Spencer is, uses artificial insemination combined with the gene regulating intelligence and a strand of DNA from the family matriarch’s corpse, Veronica Ashford, to produce siblings Alexia and Ashford. Both are byproducts of Alexander’s research on the gene regulating human intelligence – as such, Alfred has only slightly above-average intelligence, but Alexia has received the lion’s share of the IQ quota. Completing university at the age of 10 and competing as an Umbrella virologist with the equally gifted but much older William Birkin meant she could never really make friends with members of her peer group, nor did she wish to. Not only were the other children of her age too childish, but their IQ was also infinitely lower and, furthermore, they knew nothing about viruses nor did they care. In cutscenes it is implied that both Ashford siblings were eventually romantically attracted to each other (a video reel shows the two at age 10 almost kissing each other as it stops filming).
Alfred and Alexia have a mutual disdain for the rest of the public, with Alexia in particular harboring thoughts of creating a structured caste society, much like the beehive or anthill. Alfred’s notes/journals seem to suggest that Alexander was sterile, so being unable to ‘contribute’ to the Ashford family, he had to resort to artificial insemination. Of course, these ‘designer siblings’ with the specific gene regulating human intelligence all happen to fit the Aryan mould as well – which you could either chalk up to Veronica Ashford fitting that mould as well, or perhaps a deeper undercurrent that permeates the series.
Footnotes
1. [^]The flower used as the base for the Progenitor virus reminds one of Soma. Soma, if you may recall, was the pharmacological product (a hallucinogenic drug) prescribed to the population in Brave New World to keep them docile, complacent and happy. For the citizens of Brave New World, it was the closest you could get to a near-religious or ecstatic experience. Aldous Huxley based this concept on a ritual drink of importance among the Aryans. From Brave New World Revisited, Chapter VIII, “Chemical Persuasion”:
“The original soma, from which I took the name of this hypothetical drug, was an unknown plant (possibly Asclepias acida) used by the ancient Aryan invaders of India in one of the most solemn of their religious rites. The intoxicating juice expressed from the stems of this plant was drunk by the priests and nobles in the course of an elaborate ceremony. In the Vedic hymns we are told that the drinkers of soma were blessed in many ways. Their bodies were strengthened, their hearts were filled with courage, joy, and enthusiasm, their minds were enlightened and in an immediate experience of eternal life they received the assurance of their immortality. But the sacred juice had its drawbacks. Soma was a dangerous drug – so dangerous that even the great sky-god, Indra, was sometimes made ill by drinking it. Ordinary mortals might even die of an overdose.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, p69
2. [^]Another interesting similarity here: the historical Lord Herbert Spencer, whom Resident Evil character Ozwell E. Spencer is (in my humble opinion) partly based on, walked a tight rope between being a staunch devotee of Lamarckism and simultaneously extolling the virtues of ‘natural selection’. Lamarckism, as opposed to Mendelism, argued that an organism could pass on characteristics to its offspring that were borne out of the environment in which it lived.
When attempting to cultivate the flower outside Africa, the DNA-altering characteristics of the flower failed to arise. This can be read in one of the journals scattered throughout the game. Specifically, in chapter 5.1 – Underground Garden:
“FROM CHIEF RESEARCHER BRANDON’S JOURNAL – NO. 1″
“1967 Feb. 12
We’ve hit a metaphorical brick wall. We brought the Progenitor flower back from Africa and attempted to cultivate it here [the United Kingdom, the US, etc]. The initial culture samples of the Progenitor virus have not shown DNA-altering characteristics.
We cultivated the flower to mass-produce the Progenitor virus.
At first, everything proceeded smoothly. The plants were strong, and grew quickly. In a short amount of time they flowered. But here is where a major problem surfaced! The flowers did not contain the Progenitor virus! Perhaps the environment in which they’re grown triggers the development of the virus. This matter must be investigated further.”
This would prove Lamarckists right in asserting that it’s the environment that shapes inheritable traits.
3. [^]In Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, Wesker reveals the slogan Umbrella ran under for years: “Preserving the health of the people” (in a Google-esque ‘don’t be evil’ with a wink, then).
4. [^]In a class-action lawsuit in Australia against Merck for its unsafe Vioxx drug (its effects can be read elsewhere), information has surfaced that the company developed a “hit” list of doctors who were critical of the drug. Quoting from the article:
“We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live,” a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt read to the court by Julian Burnside QC, acting for the plaintiff.
…
“It gives you the dark side of the use of key opinion leaders and thought leaders … if (they) say things you don’t like to hear, you have to neutralise them,” he said. “It does suggest a certain culture within the organisation about how to deal with your opponents and those who disagree with you.”
Link: – http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25272600-2702,00.html (The Australian – Vioxx maker Merck and Co drew up doctor hit list)
5. [^]Ozwell Spencer’s plan mirrors that of Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s positive eugenics program Lebensborn. All over Germany and later in the occupied countries, the Nazis would set up orphanages and relocation homes for children. It was a breeding programme aimed at creating a “superior” breed of blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans. Thousands of Polish children who were at least considered to be halfway suitable for the program were kidnapped from their parents and subjected to Germanisation. (though the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials found no direct involvement of the Lebensborn organisation in these matters, it is not that unthinkable that they could have relied on a third party to grab the children from their parents. And anyway, since the Nazis were successful in burning a lot of pertinent records relating to the program, there is no way of knowing for sure).
It shouldn’t go amiss that Albert Wesker is blond-haired, blue-eyed as well, fitting the characteristics of the Aryan so highly sought after by the Nazis.
Also see the Czechian movie ‘The Spring Of Life’ (Czechian title: Pramen zivota) for an overall impression of the Lebensborn program.
Link: – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6117744.stm (BBC: Nazi ‘master race’ children meet)
Link: – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230652/ (Pramen zivota/The Spring of Life | 2000)
6. [^]Charles Galton Darwin, the grandson of Charles Darwin, thought alongside similar lines when writing his book The Next Million Years. Specifically, the idea of a human society modelling itself on the beehive is promulgated, as is the master race/superior breed of humans concept that Spencer seems to be aiming for.
Link: – http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/RECV/chapter26.html (Let’s Play Resident Evil Code: Veronica X – Episode 26)
Link: – http://www.scribd.com/doc/405285/The-Next-Million-Years-by-Charles-Galton-Darwin-1953- (Charles Galton Darwin: The Next Million Years)
7. [^]Blaming the victim is commoncourse when it comes to vaccine injuries. The article linked to below from the Scientific American, ‘Vaccine Injury Case Offers a Clue to the Causes of Autism‘ for instance, argues that a (purportedly) small proportion of children who contract autism from a vaccine ultimately have their parents to blame for an inheritable condition passed from the mother to the child known as ‘mitochondrial disorders’. It argues that this disorder caused the mitochondria inside her body to ’short-circuit’ (mitochondria is basically the power unit of a living cell) and cause brain disease in the process. The article even goes so far as to argue that, although the mother does not show any symptoms of being autistic (even though the doctor argues this should be the case), this would still point to a genetic defect in the mother’s nuclear DNA, separate from the mitochondrial variety. To make a long story short, the article goes to argue the mother should not have deserved compensation based on her case presented to the judge (this all is of course deeply steeped in the mitochondrial Eve theory – which is the subject of a few Square RPG videogames, such as Final Fantasy VII and Parasite Eve).
This is the kind of reasoning that betrays genetics’ roots in eugenics – that of certain people being inherently genetically superior to others. Back in eugenics’ heydays, for instance, it was argued that poverty was an inheritable disorder carried from one’s mother or father to the child – and there were plenty to choose from in the current Depression-era of the early ’30s and ’40s to accuse guilty of carrying this disease.
Link: – http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vaccine-injury-case-offer (Scientific American: Vaccine Injury Case Offers a Clue to the Causes of Autism)
Link: – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
8. [^]The notorious Harry Laughlin, who made it his personal mission to track down every defective in the United States that would not live up to his eugenic definition of human perfection, ironically died of epilepsy shortly after he was fired from the Cold Spring Harbor laboratory (the headquarters of the Eugenics Records Office). As director of the Eugenics Record Office, Harry Laughlin had pushed aggressively for compulsory sterilization and segregation of epileptics, paupers, the blind and immigrants.
Hitler, too, held no illusions as to how he would have fared under his instigated eugenic laws. Quoting from ‘War Against The Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign To Create a Master Race‘, p276:
“Moreover, as Hitler’s knowledge of American pedigree techniques broadened, he came to realize that even he might have been eugenically excluded. In later years, he conceded at a dinner engagement, “I was shown a questionnaire drawn up by the Ministry of the Interior, which it was proposed to put to people whom it was deemed desirable to sterilize. At least three-quarters of the questions asked would have defeated my own good mother. If this system had been introduced before my birth, I am pretty sure I should never have been born at all!” – Journal Of Heredity, April 1942 – On The Breeding Of Aryans
Link: – http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/33/4/141 (Oxford Journals – Journal Of Heredity, April 1942 – On The Breeding Of Aryans)
9. [^]This concept, of a virus proving to be a cure against another virus, or in the context of the game’s storyline, Jill’s T-Virus producing antibodies against the Progenitor virus strains – resembles the use of bacteriophages. These are viruses taken out of the local sewage which can then be used on patients to combat antibiotics-resistant bacteria, such as salmonella, meningitis, laryingitis, etc.
These phages have proven to be almost 100% effective in treating serious diseases in former Soviet Union satellite country Georgia since at least the 1940s, but have never been embraced by the western pharmaceutical industry because their inherent nature (for every bacteria there is an opposite bacteriophage that combats it) doesn’t lend itself well to mass production, since every case/bacteria is unique for every treatment.
Compounding the lack of knowledge on the subject outside of Russia is that a propaganda campaign was launched by the big pharmaceutical companies in the 1930s to try and discredit bacteriophagic therapy as a viable solution against bacteria. That, and all the available literature was written in Russian – the scientific community in the West has this unspoken rule that if you don’t publish your literature in English, it therefore doesn’t exist or is bereft of any merit.
Listed below is a ’90s BBC documentary (‘Phage: The Virus That Cures‘) that will no doubt prove illuminating.
Link: – http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227054.500-viruses-could-kill-superbugs-that-antibiotics-cant.html” (Viruses could kill superbugs that antibiotics can’t)
Link: – http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8887931967515748990&ei=SdlTSoX3KaXqrALzvexF&q=phage&hl=en&dur=3″ (BBC – Phage – The Virus That Cures)
The P30 flowing in Jill's veins saps her of free will while not impairing the 'ghost in the machine' (the soul, the consciousness - even though she is programmed to follow orders, she is fully aware what she's doing). Wesker gets to control the inflow of P30 through a nifty remote control function.
10. [^]This contraption bears some similarities to José Delgado’s work on electrically stimulating certain regions in the brain; effectively being able to control his test subjects by remote control. (similarity: Wesker is able to control the inflow of P30 in Jill’s bloodstream by remote control with the device – in one cutscene he can be seen giving Jill an overdose of P30 by remote control with his cellphone)
To accomplish this, José Delgado would attach a device called a ’stimoceiver’ to the brain. By way of remote control, he could then stop and start the subject’s aggressive tendencies at will. There is a video where José Delgado controls a bull inside the arena. He effectively has complete remote control over the bull and even has him running in circles against its will.
What this effectively amounted to was mind control, and José Delgado’s work is considered an early forerunner to brain chips. Of course, in the videogame’s case, the ’stimoceiver’ merely administers new doses of the drug to the patient which, in addition to altering her mood and deductive skills, enhances her physical prowess – whereas the ’stimoceiver’ from Delgado would electrically stimulate certain regions in the brain for mind control purposes. Jill is put under mind control through pharmacological means, Brave New World-style.
Arthur Koestler, José Delgado and Aldous Huxley were all of the opinion that mass drugging of the masses in order to get rid of ’stress’ or ‘anger’ would one day be desirable both from the masses’ perspective and the ruling oligarchs that control the democracies. After all, what’s wrong with being happy? Why should one worry his pretty little head about all the wrongdoings in the world? “Don’t worry, be happy” would be all that would be required of the taxpaying vote fodder.
The quote below sums it up:
“The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain.” – José Delgado, Yale University Medical School Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118 February 24, 1974
Link: – http://www.scribd.com/doc/3479889/Jose-Delgado- (An Incomplete Copy of José Delgado’s “Physical Control Of the Mind”
Link: – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPT4Pptrrbs (Video: José Delgado And His Bull Story – Humans Are Next In Line (For the Brain Implants))
11. [^]According to this article from Pravda, “A person dressed as the Plague Doctor was an unmistakable sign of imminent death”. Which is why, when things are starting to go sour for Irving, it’s fitting that Jill, dressed as a plague doctor, comes to pay Irving (the bioweapons smuggler/dealer) a last visit and hands him the control Plaga. Irving, registering a certain shock on his face when confronted with the item, is well aware what the implications would be of taking it – he will lose his physical form permanently in the ensuing rapid mutation. This is why he refrains from using it until the very last minute as an absolute last resort when he has exhausted all other options of dealing with Chris and Sheva – even going so far as to blow up a chemical plant.
In the first cutscene of the game, Jill (dressed as the plague doctor) watches by mercilessly as an African is infected with the Uroboros virus and leeches manifest all over his body. So one could say she really lives up to the archetypal role she is intended to portray by donning a Plague Doctor’s costume – everyone she comes into contact with instantly recognizes he/she is inevitably going to die soon, if not imminently.
Link: – http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/09-02-2009/107080-nostradamus_black_death-0 (Pravda.ru – Nostradamus was most famous Plague Doctor during Black Death years)
12. [^]In fact, American eugenicists were so jealous of their German cohorts’ progress in the field of racial hygiene that one scientist at one point quipped enviously, “Hitler is beating us at our own game”, suggesting the American eugenicists should up their game to keep up with Hitler’s progress in the areas of positive eugenics (Lebensborn) and negative eugenics (mass sterilization of the unfit, concentration camps and orderly disposal of racially inferior people such as Jews and gypsies; the gas chambers first suggested by George Bernard Shaw at a Royal Eugenics Society meeting in 1910[13] were put to use by Adolf Hitler decades later).
13. [^]From the book ‘War Against The Weak: Eugenics And America’s Campaign To Create A Master Race‘, p248:
“A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence, simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.” – George Bernard Shaw, Eugenics Education Society, 1910
He also proposed the development of Zyklon B:
“I appeal to the chemists to discover a humane gas that will kill instantly and painlessly. Deadly by all means, but humane, not cruel.” – George Bernard Shaw, Listener, February 7, 1934
In retrospect, then, it’s clear where Hitler got his ideas from.
14. [^]In this extract from the documentary The Soviet Story, he [George Bernard Shaw] can be heard saying:
“You must all know half a dozen people at least who are of no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say, ‘Sir (or madam), now, will you be kind enough to justify your existence?’ If you cannot justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight, …if you are not producing as much as you consume, then clearly, we cannot use the big organization of our societies for the purpose of keeping you alive. Because your life does not benefit us, and you can’t be of much use to yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw
Link: – http://www.sovietstory.com/ (The Soviet Story – Homepage)
*. For more information on the Platonic roots behind the Lebensborn program, read this article.
Link: – http://www.socialjusticespeaks.org/id29.html (Social Justice Speaks: Lebensborn – Adoption Nazi-style)
Link: – http://www.friesian.com/plato.htm (Plato’s Republic)
**.
Link: – http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/sciencetech/stalins-deranged-vision-human-ape-super-race/1257 (Environmental Graffiti: Stalin’s Deranged Vision of a Human-Ape Super Race)
Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stalins-space-monkeys-808978.html (The Independent: Stalin’s space monkeys)
Links
Link: – GameFAQs: Resident Evil 5 Transcript Guide
Link: – Wikia – Resident Evil Wiki
Resident Evil 5/Biohazard 5 and Anthrax War: on Africa and real biowarfare experiments
August 3, 2009 — popularsymbolism
After watching the CBC documentary ‘Anthrax War‘ (which I can highly recommend to anyone, even if the Anthrax attacks do not particularly interest you), I was able to connect more dots in the Resident Evil 5 storyline. It must be said, for a videogame which according to the videogame producer only involved a trip to Africa and a marathon session of Indiana Jones movies, there’s an awful lot of real-life references that cannot be simply chalked up to mere ‘coincidences’.
Table of contents
Themes
Biowarfare experiments
Chris and Sheva encounter a pile of dead bodies - recalling images of the Holocaust and apartheid South-Africa - where a eugenics campaign was being waged to get rid of the black 'undesirables' of society.
Tricell intended for the indigenous people to be routed out because they represented a threat to the underground research facility. The other Africans were mere cannon fodder and guinea pigs for ever-improving new virus strains. In one of the last scenes of the game, a huge pile of dead corpses can be seen, implying Tricell was doing orderly disposals of vast amounts of African people.
In apartheid South-Africa: During the Apartheid years, a top-secret chemical and biological weapons program was instituted by the name Project Coast. The country was waging war against Soviet-backed SWAPO, Cuban and Angolan troops, who they perceived to have the means to deploy chemical and biological weapons. The project was initiated on grounds that they were conducting research on vaccines for certain diseases. However, this altruistic aim quickly seemed to take a back seat to offensive uses of the technology.
Wouter Basson, head of the program, has been nicknamed Dr Death for his involvement in the development of several biowarfare trials and human experiments on South Africa’s own people. Like the eugenics movement in America and Nazi-Germany, the medical experiments seemed to concern themselves with fertility and the subjugation of unwanted races. The blacks were deemed undesirable and specific biowarfare experiments were initiated to reduce their numbers[1]; a specific vaccine was developed based on a proteine that would render females infertile to sperm, thus making them sterile[YouTube]. In the documentary Anthrax War, Wouter Basson admits to a journalist that during these years he repeatedly visited Fort Detrick in the USA and Porton Down in the UK for research purposes and was let on their premises[YouTube]. This seems to implicate the latter two institutions into the proceedings – it has long been suspected that Porton Down gave tacid approval to the genocidal/eugenic measures in South Africa.
Elsewhere: Several chemical and biological experiments have been performed on human guinea pigs in Fort Detrick and Porton Down[YouTube] – often without their consent or foreknowledge[2].
Front companies
The umbrella has a long and illustrious history in biowarfare: the Soviets used poisonous umbrellas for assassination missions*; South Africa's Project Coast, inspired by this, would create similar umbrellas which would fire poison pellets - ideal tools for soldiers to use upon unsuspecting enemy forces. Other everyday repurposed tools used included screwdrivers, syringes, and beer cans.
Spencer also sets up other front companies and covers, such as the Spencer estate (which is used to disguise the Arklay research facility); they strike a deal with Raccoon City police chief Brian Irons to build underground sewage research facilities (another cover).
With Umbrella gone belly up in Resident Evil 5, Wesker uses Tricell as a front company for his Uroboros Project. Tricell begins a massive ratcheting up of its biological weapons programme and uses the abandoned research facility that Spencer had set up from the beginning in Africa.
The very name ‘Umbrella’ itself is meant to refer to an ‘umbrella’ of organizations. Think of IG Farben, the Nazi chemical/pharmaceutical company that had several separate companies/research facilities under its ‘umbrella’.
In apartheid South Africa: Project Coast used a similar practice to hide the program from the public eye. They created four front companies, Delta G Scientific Company, Roodeplaat Research Laboratories, Protechnik and Infladel. Project Coast head Wouter Basson of course had majority shares in them – in Delta G’s case as much as 75%[3].
Liquidated scientists
'Anthrax War' investigates the mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of several prominent microbiologists who worked on governmental bioweapon projects - including fingered Anthrax lone gunman Bruve Ivins (from Fort Detrick), and David Kelly (from Porton Down)**.
Umbrella has its own paramilitary force that is capable of performing hits on scientists and surveilling their activities at all times. For instance, noone is to know of the African division’s existence, not even those of other Umbrella divisions. The scientists that work on the African base are kept there for life or disposed of if they intend to jump ship/get cold feet.
In real-life:: The more indispensable you are to a covert biowarfare project, the more expendable you become – particularly when you start developing misgivings on what it is you’re doing. At least that appears to be the golden rule as far as microbiology goes – Dr David Kelly, expert in biological warfare and a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, told reporters he would be found ‘dead in the woods’ a few months prior to the event. The officials insisted it was suicide, but dozens of opinion leaders (including the makers of the aforementioned documentary ‘Anthrax War‘) believe otherwise.
Ken Alibek, author of ‘Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World – Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It‘, has no illusions about his safety: “If somebody wants to kill you, there’s no problem for these people – if they’re professionals – to take care of it[YouTube]“
Interconnected research laboratories
In the game: Umbrella has several interconnected research facilities across the world (Antarctica, France, US, and Africa) that collaborate with each other from time to time – for instance, when one branch has made a prominent breakthrough that could be of use to the other branches.
In real-life: In the documentary ‘Anthrax War‘, it is revealed that Fort Detrick (US), Porton Down (UK) and Dugway (US) have an intimate history of collaboration that seems to defy existing bioweapon proliferation treaties and geopolitical tensions. The eugenics movement operated in much the same manner – Charles Davenport’s Eugenics Record Office continued to work together with Nazi-Germany and were even proud of the fact that their eugenic laws served as the progenitor of Hitler’s ‘forced sterilization’ act. As late as in 1942, glowing endorsements of Nazi-Germany’s racial hygiene policies could be read in The Journal Of Heredity.
Footnotes
1.[^]What the project was ultimately aiming for was this thing they termed a ‘black bomb’ – a race-specific bioweapon that would ’select targets based on skin color’.
Link: – http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0529-05.htm (Common Dreams.org: Biowar and the Apartheid legacy)
2.[^]See the following linked articles.
Link: – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1463993.stm (BBC: Porton Down probe launched)
Link: – http://www.infowars.com/images2/ps/porton_down_bell_documents.pdf (Declassified Documents Regarding Porton Down)
Link: – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3206993.ece (TimesOnline: Porton Down guinea-pigs get apology)
3.[^] See this Wikipedia article.
Link: – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_G_Scientific_Company – Wikipedia: Delta G Scientific Company
*. Also read the following excerpt from Wikipedia’s ‘Project Coast‘ article:
“To this end, a leaf was taken out of the Soviet book, with a number of devices, designed to look like ordinary everyday objects, being created with the capabilities to poison those targeted for assassination. Examples included umbrellas and walking sticks which fired pellets containing poison, syringes disguised as screwdrivers, and poisoned beer cans and envelopes.”
Link: – http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/07/19/spy.museum.opens/ (CNN: Poison umbrellas, lethal lipstick: Spy museum opens)
Link: – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Coast (Wikipedia: Project Coast)
**. Patrick Leahy (one of the members of Congress targeted by the Anthrax attack that survived) made it known at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September 2008 he does not believe in the FBI-promulgated theory that Bruce Ivins acted alone.
Link: – http://www.anthraxwar.com/1/?p=203 (Anthrax War: 6/8: Anthrax Conspiracy?)
Links
Anthrax War – Deadly Silence: Homepage
CBC: Anthrax War
YouTube: Anthrax War (Part 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6)
Metal Gear Solid: Genetic Bondage (spoilers)
December 1, 2009 — popularsymbolism 
After learning that Metal Gear REX was an offensive weapon instead of a theatre missile defense system, Hal Emmerich (Otacon) is overladen with guilt and tells the story of how his grandfather was involved in the Manhattan Project - and had to suffer with the subsequent guilt for the rest of his life. His father, meanwhile, was born on August 6, 1945 - the day the Hiroshima Bomb was dropped. Hal is determined not to step in his predecessors' shoes - and to prevent his own creation, Metal Gear REX, from unleashing destruction.
“I have a difficult time grasping what we have come to – modifying a person’s essential genetic structure for the sake of creating a better soldier.” – Nastasha Romanenko, In the Darkness of Shadow Moses : The Unofficial Truth, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty
Download PDF
Several other insightful essays[1] have been written about Metal Gear Solid – the third Metal Gear game and considered by many to be a ‘reboot’ of the series after its 16bit dormancy.
In this article, I will be retreading some trodden ground (particularly the Richard Dawkins/Neo-Darwinist leanings), but rest assured there is still a lot contained in this article that hasn’t been covered in-depth before.
It also happens that this article is somewhat timely given that Metal Gear Solid was recently re-released on PSN (PlayStation Network) and thus can now be played on both PlayStation3 and PSP. Luckily, the game has aged like fine wine – if you are willing to overlook the obvious downgrade in graphics and controls.
Table of contents
- Chronological timeline
- Recommended reading/viewing
- Themes
- Meaning behind words/names/terms
- Footnotes
- Links
Chronological timeline
Chronologically speaking, the events of Metal Gear Solid take place (in preceding order) after Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Therefore, some exposition is needed before the player can properly understand the following section. Provided for your convenience here is a condensed timeline; the games are listed in chronological order.
| Game | Releasedate | Timeline | Event(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2) | 2004/2005 | 1964 | Lead character: Naked Snake (later to be known as Big Boss) Plot premise: Naked Snake works for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and is redeployed somewhere in the Soviet jungle New characters: Eva, The Boss and a young Revolver Ocelot. |
| Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (PSP) | 2006/2007 | 1970 | Lead character: Naked Snake (now awarded with the title ‘Big Boss’) Plot premise: Naked Snake needs to take out his former unit FOX in South America. New characters: A young Roy Campbell. Other recurring characters: a young Revolver Ocelot, and Eva. |
| Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (PSP) | TBA (2010) | 1974 | Lead character: Naked Snake (AKA Big Boss) Plot premise: An unknown militia invades the neutral country Costa Rica. Naked Snake (Big Boss) is brought in to fight them, but he later learns that the militia are funded clandestinely by the U.S. government. New characters: Paz Ortega Andrade, Huey, Coldman and Strangelove. Recurring characters: Master Miller. |
| Metal Gear (MSX/NES) | 1987/1989 | 1995 | Lead character: Solid Snake Plot premise: Snake is sent into South Africa to infiltrate and take out Outer Heaven, a militaristic rogue nation set up by Big Boss (his father) New characters: Gray Fox (Frank Jaeger). Other recurring characters: Roy Campbell. |
| Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX2) | 1990 | 1999 | Lead character: Solid Snake Plot premise: Snake is sent to some remote place called “Zanzibar Land” bordering the Czech Republic and the US; along the way meets (and takes out) Gray Fox and Big Boss. Other recurring characters: Master Miller, Roy Campbell. |
| Metal Gear Solid (PS1) | 1998/1999 | 2005 | Lead character: Solid Snake Plot premise: Snake is brought out from early retirement to take out a terrorist group in control of a nuclear weapon New characters: Meryl Silverburgh, Naomi Hunter, Hal Emmerich (Otacon) and Liquid Snake Other recurring characters: Roy Campbell, Revolver Ocelot, Master Miller (impersonation), and Gray Fox (now a cyborg ninja). |
| Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (PS2) | 2001/2002 | 2009 | Lead character: Raiden Plot premise: Raiden is sent into a decontamination facility held hostage by a sleeper cell known as Dead Cell New characters: Emma Emmerich, Olga Gurlukovich, Vamp and Solidus Snake (former US President George Sears). Other recurring characters: Roy Campbell (impersonation), Otacon, Solid Snake (in disguise) and Revolver Ocelot (acting as Liquid whenever he meets Solid Snake). |
| Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots (PS3) | 2008 | 2014 | Lead character: Solid Snake (now nicknamed Old Snake) Plot premise: Snake is asked by his former Commander and old friend Roy Campbell to take out globalist financier of state-sponsored terror Liquid Ocelot (new name for Revolver Ocelot) New characters: Drebin, and Sunny Gurlukovich Other recurring characters: Raiden, Meryl Silverburgh, Naomi Hunter, Otacon, Vamp and Eva (now known as Big Mama). |
Recommended reading/viewing
“We used to think that our fate was in our stars. Now we know, in large part, that our fate is in our genes.” – James D. Watson
(Top, Gattaca): From a gene-centrist perspective, Vincent, being a "borrowed ladder" (or "de-gene-erate" if you may), should, by the very nature of his genes, be unable to keep up with someone like Eugene Morrow in a swimming match. But not only can he keep up with his genetic superior, he actually outperforms him. This leads Eugene to doubt whether or not he is actually so inherently superior to common-bred people as he was led to believe. There is the parable of Adolf Hitler having his entire eugenic creed discredited right in front of everybody when his eugenically superior Aryan supermen lost to a black American athlete (below) in the 1936 Olympics.
This essay on the 1997 movie Gattaca, “The New Eugenics in Cinema: Genetic Determinism and Gene Therapy in GATTACA“, should be read alongside the one you’re reading right now – as both articles cover similar ground.
The essay concludes that Gattaca was “virtually alone among recent popular-culture narratives in its rejection of the genetic-determinist ideology”, and geneticists could not help but to engage in a love/hate relationship with the film. On the one hand the movie vindicated their plight – pointing towards a future where illnesses and diseases can be prevented at birth, but at the same time the film takes a decidedly ‘pro-humanist’ stance that is opposed to all forms of scientific totalitarianism, including the ones that seem to be built on good intentions (on the surface). Its main criticism is that it puts far too much stock in genes, putting unrealistic expectations on genetically superior alpha citizens that they cannot hope to live up to while intentionally discriminating the have-nots who cannot afford such expensive gene therapy or have their children’s genetic features pre-natally determined.
Comparisons between Gattaca and Metal Gear Solid
I would argue that Metal Gear Solid, released a year later, is/was in many ways its videogame contemporary.
There are other narrative similarities between the two. Like the unprivileged “de-gene-erate” character in the film, Solid Snake outdoes his brother Liquid in nearly every battle, despite Liquid having inherited all of his fathers’ dominant genes. Similarly, it is strongly implied that Solid Snake eventually ‘outlasts’ Liquid Snake because of his sheer willpower to survive and his desire to protect Meryl and keep her out of harm’s way. The ending strongly hints at the game’s story being a Gattaca-like renounciation of the gene-deterministic perspective on life that geneticists like to espouse.
Themes
The primary theme of Metal Gear Solid is genetics and a reinvigoration of eugenics due to the successful completion of the Human Genome Project. The game also takes a (somewhat) skeptical stance on Neo-Darwinian thinking as exemplified by Darwin, Spencer and Dawkins – perceiving the gene-centered view on evolution as a dead alley and a restraint on individual potential (see Motivation – Genetics As An Axiom For Human Potential).
The game can also be interpreted as an anti-nuclear screed (see Motivation – Abolition of Nuclear Weapons).
The Sons of Big Boss
“You two are an embarassment from the 1970’s. Our country’s dirty little secret…” – Secretary Of Defense Jim Houseman to Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
There was a third 'son' of Big Boss - Solidus Snake - which received both Big Boss' dominant and recessive genes and thus came as close to being a genetic copy of Big Boss as The Patriots could get. His accelerated aging was by far the most rapid out of the three - at 28 years of age he became the President of The United States (obviously given forged birth certificates by The Patriots) - while looking like a middle-aged man in his mid-'50s.
Big Boss made his bones working as a CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) operative under the codename Naked Snake. His missions involved (among other things) infiltrating Soviet strongholds in the jungle. He goes on to be known as one of the greatest soldiers alive. But Big Boss eventually has a falling out with his former paymasters over a disagreement he has with the puppetmasters who were (unbeknownst to him up to this point) controlling and directing him all throughout his career.
This secret congregation of wealthy and powerful businessmen, called The Patriots, constituted a shadow government. Like any other oligarchy, they prefer secrecy and would rather some frontman take all the blame for decisions made on their behalf. After observing Big Boss’ rising stature as a soldier and military strategist, they immediately foresaw the benefits in having some powerful soldier like Big Boss be one of their frontmen – as a head of state as well as a soldier. But the problem was that such a person had to be controlled and ultimately not turn against the very system that had ‘created’ him so to speak. Given that (which was already a major complication – by the mid ’70s Big Boss was becoming more and more disillusioned with this shadowy cabal) and the inconvenient side-effect of Big Boss having been rendered sterile (this is explained in the ‘prequel’ games – Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops – this will be covered in an upcoming article), The Patriots decide to try their hand at a human breeding experiment.
Les Enfants Terribles
“You and I were originally octuplets. The other six of our brothers were sacrificed to make us. We were accomplices in murder before we were even born” – Liquid Snake, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
This ’70s project (‘Les Enfants Terribles’) was developed with the specific intent to produce the ultimate supersoldier. It shares some similarities with the positive eugenics experiments of Nazi-Germany (Lebensborn – also see Resident Evil 5 – Wesker’s Eugenic Endgame) – but obviously utilizing far more advanced technology given the wealth of knowledge they had acquired (about DNA and genes, for instance) by the ’70s. The desire to breed a specific subset of human supersoldiers dates back to Plato’s writings in Plato’s Republic. Eva (Big Boss’ lover in the prequel games) participated willingly in this project – they used Big Boss’ DNA to create a fertilized egg cell (zygote) that was then divided into eight separate egg cells.
Six of the eight fetuses inside Eva’s uterus were then intentionally aborted to encourage strong prenatal development in the two remaining ones. Solid Snake got all the recessive genes, while Liquid Snake received all the dominant ones.
Genetic Limits To Growth
There were some safeguards in place to prevent the clones from wreaking havoc in the unlikely event they went rogue. First of all, their reproductive abilities were permanently subdued by implanting them with a ‘terminator gene’ – similar in intent to Monsanto’s Genetic use restriction technology (GURT) used in its pharmacological crops.
The next inherent genetic safeguard was more of a byproduct stemming from the somatic cloning techniques employed to create Solid and Liquid – but The Patriots exacerbated this inherent flaw so as to turn it into a feature. Since cloned organisms often end up with significantly shorter telomeres due to the fact that the DNA has already been divided countless times, the subject will age far more rapidly as opposed to an organism conceived through natural means. In a timespan of just 10 years, Solid Snake would change in appearance from an adult looking to be in his late-’20s to an elderly man rapidly approaching his mid-70s.
Gulf War Brothers And Sisters
“Publicly, the President has been very vocal in his opposition to eugenics experiments.” – Naomi Hunter, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
The game attributes the real cause of the Gulf War Syndrome (still termed Gulf War Syndrome in 1998, now Gulf War Illness) to secret gene therapy experiments whereby Gulf War soldiers were injected with the 'soldier genes' from Big Boss.
But according to Liquid, the eugenic experiments by the U.S. government did not just stop at ‘Les Enfants Terribles’.
Upon hearing from Liquid that the Gulf War soldiers were subjected to gene therapy experiments and injected with Big Boss’ soldier genes during the process, Solid Snake immediately balks at the very idea (the following dialogue excerpt is from the 2004 remake, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes):
“Solid Snake: Ha! Everyone knows that the Gulf War Syndrome was caused by exposure to pesticides and radiation from depleted uranium rounds.
Liquid Snake: [chuckling] That was just the cover story issued by the Pentagon. First they tried to say it was post-traumatic stress disorder, then chemical or biological weapons. The poison gas detection units and the anti-sarin injections, they were all just to cover up the secret genetic experiments…
Solid Snake: So then… the so-called Gulf War babies that have been reported by Gulf War veterans are…
Liquid Snake: Yes. They, too, are our brothers and sisters[2].
Out of these initial experiments arose the Next-Generation Special Forces and the Genome Soldiers – both containing much of the same soldier genes as Big Boss as a result of gene therapy.
Genetic diversity
“Have you ever heard of the Asymmetry Theory? Nature tends to favor asymmetry. Those species which have gone extinct all show signs of symmetry.” – Liquid Snake to Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
The basic problem permeating the Les Enfants Terribles project is the same one that has haunted Charles Darwin and evolutionary thinking in the past – yet conveniently it also served its purpose as an insurance policy on The Patriots’ behalf. The basic problem is that of genetic diversity – what Liquid Snake refers to as the ‘Asymmetry Theory’.
Genetic diversity is defined by this Wikipedia article as follows:
“Genetic diversity is a level of biodiversity that refers to the total number of genetic characteristics in the genetic makeup of a species”.[Wikipedia]
Apparently, genetic diversity plays a big part in determining whether an organism can adapt to its environment and survive. If an organism is not genetically diverse, if the common ancestor that it derives from is on a genetic level too similar, then that species is in danger of dying off due to a certain disease it can not adapt to. Given that, healthy reproduction can become increasingly difficult if a sudden illness causes a swift decline in the overall fitness of a given blood-related species.
Inbreeding and human cloning both lead to a reduction in genetic diversity, and it’s for precisely these reasons that inbreeding and incest has been shunned throughout history without much thought being given as to why[3].
Because Solid Snake and Liquid Snake are essentially genetic copies of Big Boss, their immune system, too, is identical. What this means that if a virus comes along that their particular immune system cannot adapt to, they are in danger of simply dying off.
This, to Liquid’s mind, solidifies his notion that ‘they’ (meaning him and the other ‘Sons of Big Boss’) are on the verge of death at the genetic level.
Retroviruses and the Human Genome Project
“Science has always thrived on war.” – Hal Emmerich (Otacon), Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
As of 2007, the Human Genome Project is considered to be successfully 'completed'. With the mapping of the human genome came an increased understanding of RNA retroviruses and their effects on the human body. The development of race-specific bioweapons as a political tool is now a reality.
The development of RNA retroviruses is intrinsically tied to gene therapy and the Human Genome Project that much of the game’s backstory hinges upon. In previous articles (see Resident Evil 5, and The Impact Of Zombies On Society), we have already elaborated at length on the eugenics movement of the early 20th century and what came out of that.
Metal Gear Solid’s story, taking place in the year 2005, however, has no such need for dwelling on the past, and instead covers eugenics in its current 21st century inception, starting with the Human Genome Project.
The Human Genome Project was initiated by James Watson who directed it from 1988 to 1992. The scope of the project was to map out the entire ‘genomic’ code of humanity. Basically, what this entails is that all of the hereditary information inside a human organism was to be laid bare so scientists could get a better understanding of how humans operate.
Attempts at a better understanding of the inner workings of Man were tried before by the Eugenics Record Office (1910-1944) – information on specific human traits was compiled in a so-called Trait Book, which also tracked information on ‘pedigree’ (superior) families and their specific traits. Of course, by the time the Human Genome Project was initiated, the field of genetics and molecular biology had advanced to such a point that the ERO’s relative efforts were left in the dust – or at worst made a complete mockery out of it.
Now that the genomic code was entirely documented for the first time, scientists could gain a better understanding of the underlying causes of sickness, bacterias and viral strains in humans. With this increase in knowledge, however, came also the distinct possibility of an increase in biological warfare capabilities. For example, specific RNA (Ribonucleic acid) viruses could now be developed that could replicate itself inside a host cell of the target, produce its own DNA from the genomic code of the virus and then incorporate itself into the host’s DNA. Not only selective targeting of individuals was now a possibility, but also the targeting of specific genotypes (meaning people of a certain ethnic trait)[4]
This, and several other related advancements in viral research, led the Pentagon towards developing military-grade retroviruses for use as biological weapons. The FOXDIE virus would be such a weapon.
The mission
"I hear the terrorist are calling themselves: 'The Sons of Big Boss'". This obvious reference to the Sons of Liberty - the secret society that was formed by the Founding Fathers of the United States - implicates Solidus Snake in the Shadow Moses Incident proceedings. In the spirit of the American Revolutionary War, he is trying to ignite the fire of the revolutionary spirit by pulling off a false-flag operation that will force The Patriots to come out of the shadows. In particular, he wants to wrest control of The Patriots' new weapon, Metal Gear Rex, away from them and use it as a battering ram against them so that he can put the country (and for that matter the world) back in the hands of parliamentary democratic control - or at least keep it outside The Patriots' control.
The whole truth behind the mission was never properly revealed to the player until the release of the second game, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. In retrospect, it appears this so-called ‘terrorist hijacking’ of the base was a well-devised ruse by a man trying to exert himself as the leader of his own country by taking out the forces that were manipulating him behind the scenes.
Orchestration of the incident
As revealed in the previous chapter – there was a third ’son’ of Big Boss that happened to be a near-exact replica – Solidus Snake. While Solid Snake would come to experience the same ‘accelerated aging’ phenomenon (most likely a form of Werner syndrome), Solidus Snake in particular was engineered specifically to age markedly faster. This was presumably because The Patriots wanted to groom him for his role as a Presidential Nominee, a figure head of the United States bowing to The Patriots’ every whim. In public life he adopted the alias ‘George Sears’ (most likely a reference to the Civil War General) and became the 43rd President Of The United States.
But Solidus Snake proved to be not quite the willing puppet The Patriots had in mind. While The Patriots did manage to pass through the Metal Gear Rex project and the Genome Soldiers eugenics experiments on Solidus’ watch, he figured he had one last ace in the hole that could turn the tide.
He bided his time until all the chess pieces were into place – Metal Gear Rex being essentially completed and only needing the test data to prove its potential; a pre-arranged meeting between DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) chief Donald Anderson and Arms Tech CEO Kenneth Baker at the disposal facility. The aim was to conduct test experiments of Metal Gear REX’s nuclear launch capabilities in a virtual environment and retrieve the test data. This was to be Solidus Snake’s perfect moment of opportunity to stage a false-flag provocation that would put The Patriots off-guard.
Solidus’ mole in FOXHOUND
Solidus Snake would need some mole as part of the staged insurrection to ensure the central players in the revolt would not derail Solidus’ original plan for Metal Gear REX.
Revolver Ocelot would serve as George Sears/Solidus Snake’s eyes and ears – a double agent pretending to work under Liquid. He was the one that persuaded Liquid Snake to mount his insurrection at the base using the Genome Army and Next-Generation Special Forces to grab hold of Metal Gear Rex. Liquid would then issue his demands to the US Government:
- Hand over the remains of Big Boss
- [after learning Snake was brought in as the carrier of a virus vector] A vaccine for the FOXDIE virus – this was most likely not anticipated by Solidus beforehand, and a change of course on Liquid’s part
If the demands were not met, Liquid would threaten to use Metal Gear Rex as an ICBM launcher.
Liquid’s divergence from the plan
“That Liquid Snake is a smart one…he knows the political climate. His actions were obviously very well calculated…” – Nastasha Romanenko, Metal Gear Solid
It’s not known if Liquid was ever aware he, too, was being used as a pawn. Believing he had full control over the mission, he wanted instead to fulfill Big Boss’ vision of a militaristic nation that was outside the sphere of influence of The Patriots.
Due to his geopolitical savvy, Liquid was in favour of playing superpowers against each other rather than taking them head on (such as: launching a nuke against the United States itself), which would most likely result in mutual assured destruction. This was the reason why he went against Ocelot’s suggestion to set the target for the nuclear strike to be Chernoton, Russia – preferring instead Lipnor, China – the location of a nuclear test site. Firing a nuke on civilian territory would spell the end for any possible future negotiations – but an attack on a nuclear test site could still be concealed from the public by the Chinese government. This way, he could pit the Chinese faction of The Patriots against the American faction – and the latter would be forced to confess to some of its state secrets. At that point he figured the other superpowers in the world would be interested in buying the system from them (Metal Gear Rex and possibly improved Genome Soldiers) – at which point he would sell them to the highest bidder.
Liquid Snake believed in ‘directed guidance’ of conflict – in creating the preconditions of perpetual war between major geographical power blocs (not unlike Nineteen Eighty Four’s take on it) so soldiers such as him would never lose their place in the world. In a way, he’s applying the ‘Selfish Gene’ theory to socio-economical-political phenomena – ensuring he and his ilk would never have to switch careers. There’s a big question mark hanging over his motives – it’s doubtful whether he genuinely wanted to curb The Patriots’ stranglehold over the world to restore some mirage of a free and open society – or whether he was merely in it for the egotistical power trip.
The Patriots’ Contingency Plan
The incident (dubbed the FOXHOUND Rebellion) catches the Pentagon (and, by extension, The Patriots) off-guard: they did not want to let their joint research project Metal Gear REX go to waste, and more importantly, they needed its test data for BDA (bomb damage assessment) purposes. This was the reason why both the DARPA chief (himself an operative and founding member of The Patriots) and ArmsTech CEO Kenneth Baker were both present at the nuclear disposal facility housing Metal Gear – to observe the VR (Virtual reality) simulation and take the data back to the Pentagon on an optical storage medium.
As soon as the Pentagon learns of Liquid Snake’s demands – The Patriots get into play. Obviously they’re not going to give in to his demands, as the remains of Big Boss are the bedrock of all the eugenics experiments performed by the government. So, they develop a contingency plan instead: a lone agent infiltrates the base, takes out the terrorists, retrieves the test data, leaves Metal Gear REX unharmed and returns to base. To achieve full command and control (C2) over the mission, they placed several moles at highly strategic positions of mission command:
| Person | Function |
|---|---|
| Jim Houseman | As the Secretary Of Defense, Jim Houseman is in charge of the entire Shadow Moses operation through AWACS. His aim is to retrieve Metal Gear REX and the nuclear test data unharmed. The only life he considers worth saving at the base is that of fellow Patriots stooge, Donald Anderson. The rest have been specifically targeted for elimination by coming into contact with the carrier of the FOXDIE virus (ie Solid Snake). |
| Richard Ames | Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) chief, Patriots minion and the one who essentially forces his ex-spouse Nastasha Romanenko into providing mission support for Snake. During the job, she becomes privy to classified information that puts her life at risk. |
| Donald Anderson (AKA Sigint) | He is the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) chief. He is a founding member of The Patriots and collaborated and oversaw many projects during his stint at the agency, including the ARPANET (predecessor of the Internet). It was an inconvenience and a loss for The Patriots that he was captured and killed at Ocelet’s hand. |
Characters
Nearly all of the characters have at least one character flaw. This could be some traumatic event in their past that shaped their character, or some particular doctrine/philosophical creed they adhere to that, in one way or another, leaves them vulnerable to attack.
Solid Snake
“Well, I don’t believe in coincidences. Something funny’s going on.” – Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid
Back in the good old days of the '80s, Japanese game artists resorted to plagiarizing the likenesses of famous actors in Hollywood films wholecloth with an audacious disregard for copyright infringement; (above-left) Solid Snake as shown on the Metal Gear (1987) MSX/NES boxart; (above right) Michael Biehn from The Terminator (1984); (bottom) Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots (2008).
Solid Snake is the twin brother of Liquid Snake. He is the one handpicked by The Patriots to infiltrate the Alaskan nuclear disposal facility at Shadow Moses Island.
Coerced mission assignment
“I should have known you were behind this, Colonel.” – Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
Committing patricide in the name of serving one’s country and restoring world peace was one step too many for Snake’s conscience; after the events of Zanzibarland (Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake), he went into early retirement and started a new life as a dog musher somewhere in Alaska. He wanted nothing to do again with his former profession.
When news broke of Liquid Snake’s ultimatum to the White House, The Patriots set their contingency plan into motion: Roy Campbell was brought out from early retirement to become Snake’s CO (Commanding Officer) once more, while Snake himself was forcibly kidnapped from his home in Alaska and dragged into a holding cell. There he was briefed on the situation by Roy Campbell – and forcibly injected by Naomi Hunter without even having decided to accept the mission yet[5].
Snake was to infiltrate Shadow Moses Island (a fictional archipelago situated in Alaska) under the auspices of a rescue and reconnaissance operation. Because of the extremely harsh climate, Snake would need some stimulants to keep him alive and alert. This is where Dr Naomi Hunter came in.
Pharmacological stimulants
“That was quite a cocktail.” – Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid
Solid Snake has received a variety of psychotropic stimulants and chemical injections as part of his mission detail.
Benzedrine: Marketed by the pharmaceutical establishment under the name Amphetamine. Keeps Snake awake and responsive for 12 straight hours.
Antifreeze protein: What Naomi Hunter refers to as an ‘anti-freezing peptide’. Prevents Snake’s blood and other bodily fluids from freezing even at sub-arctic temperatures. Antifreezing proteins are increasingly being used in the real world for a wide variety of purposes – one example being Unilever incorporating it into some of their products, including popsicles and ice creams.
Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) are merely a class of amino acids that certain plants, fungi and bacteria produce to survive in sub-zero temperatures. From the Wikipedia article:
“Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) or ice structuring proteins (ISPs) refer to a class of polypeptides produced by certain vertebrates, plants, fungi and bacteria that permit their survival in subzero environments.”[Wikipedia]
Nootropics: Also referred to as smart drugs, or memory enhancers. Amphetamine and Ritalin both fall under this category. There are inherent hazards associated with these ’smart drugs’, however, such as serotonin syndrome or addiction to the drug.
Snake’s Usefulness as A Viral Vector
(Top): Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid being given an inoculation containing the virus; (bottom) Snake Plissken being injected with microscopic explosives that are set to be activated fifteen minutes before the deadline.
In gene therapy, retroviruses are the leading weapon employed in the fight against diseases. Retroviruses are injected into the given subject to attack only the dividing cells.
To give but one specific example: to treat brain cancer, the subject is injected with a retrovirus containing a “suicide gene”. These retroviruses then produce factories in the body churning out massive quantities of their kind in order to then conspire against the dividing cells (cancer cells) and destroy them. The other cells remain unaltered by the virus due to the existence of something termed the “bystander effect”.
It stands within reason that if a virus vector can be used in such a way to alleviate diseases – it could also be used to attack specific DNA sequences for warfare purposes. This is what the Pentagon sought to engineer under its ambitious bioweapons program – of which Dr. Naomi Hunter later became a part of.
The Patriots, with the Secretary Of Defense acting as the official go-between guy, desired to retrieve Metal Gear REX unharmed and dispose of anybody who knew about the project or the shenanigans involving the nuclear disposal site. To do that, a novel approach in dealing with the problem was needed. FOXDIE would fit the bill for a number of reasons:
- It could be sold to lower-ranking military brass as ‘just a specific vaccine’ the guinea pig had to be injected with that would cause no additional side-effects – and they would think nothing more of it.
- A lone wolf such as Snake could be sent in under the pretense of a ‘rescue operation’, encounter the ‘targets’ the FOXDIE virus would be specifically designed to target, and infect them in the process -causing immediate cardiac arrest in the target. In essence, they would use Solid Snake as a living and breathing retrovirus carrier – spreading the disease throughout the entire base and killing everyone in its path.
- Specific high-profile members of The Patriots (such as Donald Anderson, and one would presume Revolver Ocelot) were left conveniently out of the crosshairs.
The Pentagon did not anticipate that the person responsible for much of the breakthrough research involving the FOXDIE virus would essentially yank in a last-minute feature of her own: next to the predefined targets the virus was supposed to eliminate, it would also target the host, Solid Snake, itself – but instead of causing instant death, it would remain dormant inside the body and be activated at some random date in time. The mere knowledge that he could die at any given minute was the added psychological torment Naomi wished to impose upon him for having killed her beloved brother – for the rest of his life, Snake would have to live with the specter of Death looming over his shoulder.
Thus, Solid Snake was unwittingly injected with the FOXDIE virus and remained none the wiser as to the mysterious deaths surrounding the (fake) DARPA chief (in reality Decoy Octopus, one of the FOXHOUND terorrists) and Kenneth Baker until Naomi finally revealed to him the real reason behind the inoculations. By ensuring anyone inside the base who had firsthand information on Metal Gear Rex would never leave the base alive, the Pentagon was in a position to contain the `leakage` of their secret black-ops program. In this respect, it paid off – to a degree. What they didn’t anticipate in all likelihood was that the President would throw a wrench in their plans at the last minute. (a wave of conspicuous assassinations and forced resignations would then ensue – George Sears had to do a Nixon and go into hiding while the Secretary Of Defense was placed under arrest and committed ’suicide’ a few months later)
Nanomachines And The Biofeedback Loop
(Top picture): Your interaction (as the player) with Solid Snake and Naomi Hunter constitutes a quasi-biofeedback loop. Unlike other videogame protagonists, Solid Snake's reactions to his environment remain to a certain degree outside the player's control. This is even more pronounced in the later sequels: in Metal Gear Solid 2, Snake will get sick if he spends too much time in the rain (Bottom picture). Being sick makes him liable to sneeze at certain inconvenient moments - to suppress this, the player can give him a psychotropic drug such as Diazepam. (Middle picture): NASA has patented a biofeedback videogame concept that trains people to change their brainwave activity or other physiological functions while playing popular off-the-shelf videogames.
Naomi Hunter has also been made in charge of administering and monitoring Solid Snake’s health through the various nanomachines she has injected him with.
By having Naomi be available to you at all times by codec to provide you with constant updates on your physical health status, one could argue this constitutes a biofeedback loop of some sort. But unlike Psycho Mantis reading the contents of your memory card and telling you what you already know and have no immediate effect on (ie. Mantis tells you that you like Castlevania based on the fact that a save game is contained on your Memory Card) , in this instance the player is actively participating in breaking the fourth wall.
Let’s have a look at the definition of biofeedback and then bring up the example of Snake smoking a cigarette:
“Biofeedback is a non-medical process that involves measuring a subject’s specific and quantifiable bodily functions such as blood pressure, heart rate, skin temperature, sweat gland activity, and muscle tension, conveying the information to the patient in real-time. This raises the patient’s awareness and therefore the possibility of conscious control of those functions.”[Wikipedia]
If you call Campbell while you are smoking a cigarette, Naomi will confront you with your ‘dirty deed’ and get into a long-winded monologue explaining which exact gene is being triggered by smoking that will eventually result in the person contracting lung cancer. You can also see the health meter slowly deteriorating while ingesting nicotine. Thus, by observing a detrimental effect to Snake’s health without no obvious benefit to be gleaned from him smoking a cigarette, you (the player) can perhaps be persuaded into adjusting Snake’s behaviour pattern and ditching the cigarette entirely. On the other hand, when Snake needs to pass through a room laden with infrared sensors, he can use the cigarettes to his advantage as the smoke reveals the infrared beams. Alternatively, he could also opt for the thermal goggles – but this is a luxury that you will eventually acquire during the mission – while Snake’s cigarettes are available to you right from the start.
A second example involves another nanomachine Naomi injected you with that protects you against phosphorus-based nerve gas for a short time duration. This is due to the nanomachine containing protopam chloride (PAM), a nerve gas neutralizing agent. A second meter will pop up if you’re in a room with nerve gas seeping in. This meter indicates the amount of time you have left before the PAM supply inside the nanomachine runs out, after which you will have to reach for a Gas Mask or escape the room in some other way.
Another example involves the accuracy of Snake’s hand-eye coordination. This is nearly outside the player’s control – the PSG-1 sniper rifle he gets to equip is a bit on the wobbly side, and to beat Sniper Wolf the player will have to find some way to get Snake to steady his aim so your crosshair in first-person mode won’t float all over the place. There are two ways to achieve this – one, you could opt for the diazepam drug – but these come in short supply, and what’s more, they’re highly addictive. On the other hand, having Snake smoke cigarettes tends to calm him down and have the added side effect of making him a more accurate sharpshooter – but obviously there’s a tradeoff involved here between the amount of health that is depleted by you smoking the cigarettes versus the added accuracy this lends to your sniping abilities. It’s up to the player to weigh the pros against the cons based on the constant influx of health information that gets relayed to him through the User Interface (UI).
The player thus acts as an intermediary between Naomi Hunter and Solid Snake – he doesn’t have complete control over Snake (in the sense that no amount of analog stick manoeuvring will really compensate for Snake’s shoddy aim at times without the player regulating his body in one way or another), he doesn’t have the wealth of knowledge that Naomi has either about prescription drugs and its effects on the body, but he isn’t a complete spectator either and can use the information passed down from Naomi to the player in order to improve Snake’s performance. This is made even more pronounced in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty – if Snake has been made to stand outside in the rain for too long, he catches a cold and will sneeze from time to time. Needless to say, this will cause a lot of complications once inside the tanker and trying to sneak your way past guards.
Liquid Snake
Liquid Snake is the twin brother of Solid Snake. He is a highly gifted soldier; well-versed in history, calculating, and a great geopolitical strategist. He is the leader of the now-turned-rogue black-ops unit FOXHOUND.
As a testament to his social engineering skills, he manages to fool Snake throughout the entirety of his mission by adopting the identity of his former mentor, Master Miller. This serves a variety of purposes: first, to keep tabs on his progress (see how far along he is) by providing him with help over a codec line; second, use him as an unwitting cog in their plan to activate the nuke on Metal Gear; third, to eventually build confidence between himself and Snake by ratting out Naomi Hunter.
Motivation – The Selfish Gene
“In nature, family members don’t mate with each other. And yet they help each other to survive. Do you know why? It increases the chance that their genes will be passed on to a new generation. Altruism among blood relatives is a response to natural selection. It’s called the Selfish Gene Theory.” – Liquid Snake to Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
According to Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene, humans are basic survival machine automatons that - like robot vehicles - are blindly programmed to selfishly preserve their own molecules known as genes. Liquid Snake acts accordingly - he's trying to stave off decay by figuring out a solution for the clones' genetic symmetry. In a sense, he performs the act of altruism not as part of his own conscious decision - but rather by initiative of his genes. Since, according to Dawkins, genes only engage in altruism in concert with their kin and natural selection tends to favor group selection, Liquid figures that the only way to stay alive is by preserving his blood brothers, hence the 'Sons of Big Boss' revolution.
Liquid Snake’s prowess as a strategical thinker and exemplary soldier are a direct result of his inheriting all of Big Boss’ soldier genes. But his awareness of the genetic landscape and his ongoing inferiority complex with regards to Solid Snake also tends to narrow his potential.
The main conundrum Liquid Snake finds himself in is that he is ultimately a victim of his own slavish convictions regarding evolutionary Darwinism. Liquid Snake is under the (misguided) perception that he received the brunt of all the recessive genes while Solid Snake was awarded with all the dominant ones. According to Neo-Darwinian orthodoxy, this would mean that Solid Snake would be the superior of the two siblings. Even though he feels cheated and seems to blame Solid Snake for not being the true inheritor of Big Boss’ genetic heritage, he still harbors an intense desire to preserve his gene pool by finding a cure to the ‘genetic symmetry’ problem so that his lifespan and that of the Sons of Big Boss may be extended. He states time and time again to his brother (Solid Snake) that he is intent on carrying out his genetic fate – ie. his genes tell him to put up a fight against ‘natural selection’ so that his genes will be carried to the next generation by way of ‘natural selection’. In essence, he’s trying to beat Lady Luck at her own game.
In his existentialist rantings, Liquid can be repeatedly heard referring to Richard Dawkins‘ ‘Selfish gene’ theory. This theory espouses that genes are inherently selfish – and that the only true act of altruism on the part of a gene is to be found among blood relatives. When a relative of the gene is in danger, its genes will command the individual to protect them, even if it ends up sacrificing the host organism. Dawkins postulates that genes have the capacity to recognize if their kin are in danger – and to make the organism perform a decidedly unselfish act on the part of its genes so that the gene itself will eventually pass on (in some form or another) to another generation. Hence Liquid’s statement that “altruism among blood relatives is a response to natural selection”. When viewed from this perspective, this would make humans and animals alike the mere servants of their constituent parts – ’selfish genes’ that play the role of the proverbial ‘puppetmaster’.
This serves as Liquid’s rationale for saving the Genome Soldiers from the brink of extinction. And to do that, he would need to obtain the remains of Big Boss so that he can research his DNA more thoroughly – hence why it’s among his list of demands from the US government.
Roy Batty and Liquid Snake
The likely source of his inspiration is a similar character from the movie Blade Runner[6] – Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer in the movie.
(Top-left): Roy Batty - Rutger Hauer - in Blade Runner; besides the narrative similarities established in the accompanying paragraph, there are other similarities between Liquid Snake and the Rutger Hauer character. Both character and actor sport the blue eyes and blond hair that is the characteristic of the supposed Aryan ideal that race scientists strove after. Both are the product of genetic-engineering experiments; both wear essentially a long trenchcoat over their bare torso; both take off their top clothes in the final ensuing battle; both display an understanding of genetics. Both are filled with hate for their creator.
Roy Batty is the latest iteration (NEXUS Series 6) in a long assembly line of cybernetic organisms produced by a major genetic-engineering corporation – Tyrell Corporation. As a practical failsafe (because of the NEXUS-6 line’s capacity to have memories and emotional responses), the company gives each cyborg a fixed lifespan of roughly six years.
The cyborgs are mostly used as off-world colony slave workers – if one of them escapes from the off-world colonies and decides to travel to Earth, they are to be hunted down by special police squads known as “Blade Runners”, whose sole duty is to put them into “retirement” – a friendly-sounding euphemism for killing them.
Roy Batty, the leader of a renegade group of NEXUS-6 cyborgs that have travelled to Earth, instigates a rebellion of his own against the very company that created him. Unlike Liquid Snake in Metal Gear Solid, they have no doomsday device to grab hold of that will force the Tyrell Corporation into giving in to their demands. Instead, they opt for a more subtle approach by going through the chain of command. The eye geneticist Cho is approached first, but he offers no solutions other than referring them to JF Sebastian. After they have extracted all useful information out of him, he is subsequently disposed of. JF Sebastian is next on the chopping block – apparently the main designer of the NEXUS cyborgs. He leads them to the pivotal head – Eldon Tyrell, CEO of Tyrell Corporation. The vain hope in all this is that, by threat and intimidation tactics, Tyrell would be able to extend their lifespan.
But alas, the Tyrell boss offers no such respite. The ensuing dialogue between the two sheds some light on Liquid’s conundrum as well:
Eldon Tyrell: The facts of life. To make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it’s been established.
Roy Batty: Why not?
ET: Because by the second day of incubation, any cells that have undergone reversion mutations give rise to revertant colonies, like rats leaving a sinking ship. Then the ship sinks.
RB: What about EMS recombination?
ET: We’ve already tried it. Ethyl methane sulfonate is an alkylating agent and a potent mutagen. It created a virus so lethal the subject was dead before he left the table.
RB: Then a repressive protein – that blocks the operating cells.
ET: It wouldn’t obstruct replication, but it does give rise to an error in replication, so that the newly formed DNA strand carries the mutation and you’ve got a virus again. But, uh, this – all of this is academic. You were made as well as we could make you.[Blade Runner: The Script][Youtube]
Liquid’s Achilles heel
“That’s right! I’m just the leftovers of what they used to make you. Can you understand what it’s like to know that you’re garbage since the day you were born!?” – Liquid Snake to Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
What Liquid doesn’t realize is that by buying wholesale into this notion of being the lesser of two cellular organisms and believing that his genes will ultimately restrict him from ever surpassing his genetically-imposed limits, he restrains himself unnecessarily both in physical and mental terms. After all, at the end of the game Revolver Ocelot informs his boss (Solidus Snake) that the ‘inferior one’ won out after all – inferring that he knew all along that Liquid was the superior one after all, and that he had got it all backwards. It is likely that Liquid was deliberately fed this misinformation to see if it had any detrimental effect on his performance. In the end, it did.
Naomi Hunter
“It’s your genes… they make you predisposed towards violence!” – Naomi Hunter to Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
As a geneticist, Naomi is very useful for providing Snake with information about all sorts of psychotropic drugs that might temporarily improve Snake`s performance, such as diazepam (better known as Valium).
Naomi Hunter is part of Solid Snake’s support team. She has a background in genetic engineering and previously served as the head of FOXHOUND’s medical department prior to the uprising.
Involvement in Pentagon bioweapons program
Naomi conceals an ulterior motive for assisting Solid Snake in the mission. Unbeknownst to Snake until the latter stages of the mission, Naomi happens to bear intense resentment against Snake for killing her surrogate brother in Zanzibar. This seems to be understandable for a number of reasons – Naomi suffers from severe psychological problems due to what she experienced in her homecountry and because of the lack of maternal/parental love. Thus she has no real identity of her own – hence why she turned to genetics in the first place.
After she learns her ‘big brother’ has died, she turns her hatred for Snake into a motivating stimulus that perfectly complements her identity struggle. She takes on the identity of someone else – a real doctor called Naomi Hunter (apparently only ‘Naomi’ is part of her real name and she has no real surname). Through impersonating this person, she succeeds in getting to work for a major private pharmaceutical corporation that is jointly working for the Pentagon on a project to provide medical treatment to the genetically altered soldiers known as the Next-Generation Special Forces.
It is not known whether or not she knew about this before being recruited by the company, but during her stay at the company, she learns Frank Jaeger may not be dead after all. Feeling pity for what little was left of her ‘big brother’ – essentially kept under harsh and overly excessive pharmacological control that disrupted his senses and cognitive functions – she helped him escape from the laboratory and implicated herself in aiding and abetting the murder of Dr. Clark – FOXHOUND’s chief medical scientist.
With Clark gone, Naomi assumes the position of head geneticist of the FOXHOUND medical lab. She eventually becomes involved in the Pentagon’s secret biological weapons program, FOXDIE.
Motivation – Genetics As An Axiom For Human Potential
“You mustn’t allow yourself to be chained to fate, to be ruled by your genes” – Naomi Hunter, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
Is genes all there is to a life organism? A resounding 'no', gene-centric Naomi is forced to conclude. She would be part of a growing number of evolutionary biologists and scientist swho have to come to view the DNA and gene-centric view of evolution with extreme skepticism, suspecting a deterministic ideology is afoot here*.
After being exposed as a spy and placed under house arrest by Colonel Campbell, Naomi Hunter has en epiphany on her career choice at the end of the game.
Born a ‘dirty little orphan’ in Rhodesia (what would be modern-day Zimbabwe today), Naomi lacks a sense of self-identity as she never got to knew her real parents. When her surrogate brother (Frank Jaeger) decides to take her to America, suddenly all sorts of career opportunities open up to her that she wouldn’t have enjoyed at home. Of these, she seeks refuge and salvation in science – genetic engineering, to be precise.
Naomi’s hope was that by analysing her genes and cracking the underlying code of specific genetic sequences, she would be able to deduce who she really is and what she is meant to be doing, and ultimately be able to track down her family lineage and find out who her real parents were.
But at the end of Solid Snake’s mission she feels disillusioned with her ‘faith’ in genetic engineering. She is forced to conclude that for all her accomplishments in the field of genetics, it never gave her any fulfilling answers to the questions she sought in the first place. Moreover, she is now beginning to ponder whether it is extremely backwards (instead of ‘progressive’) to put everything down to one’s “genes”. In this regard, she takes the opposite direction from the Dawkinian school of biological determinism.
In her revised opinion, genetics merely determines the kind of path and capabilities that a person can take – but it does not in any way imply one particular path predetermined by one’s genes. Seen from that perspective, it is possible for Solid Snake to redeem himself – not to merely continue going down the path of a hired killer, but to travel down an alternative path – towards a future entirely unrelated to war and destruction.
What led to her reconsidering her previously unshakeable conviction? Perhaps it came about as a result of what she observed during the Shadow Moses mission; before the mission, she thought of Solid Snake as little more than a ruthless killer without any regard for human empathy. Halfway through the mission, she is forced to revise her assessment – there is still a human aspect to Snake despite his past transgressions (for instance, he cares about Meryl, and depending on whether or not you survived the torture session without giving in, he is even willing to muster up the energy to endure a particularly gruelling torture session to keep Meryl alive).
But perhaps most worrying to her conscience would be the pathological nature of Liquid Snake, Snake’s brother and in many ways his twin shadow. If anything, it served as an example of where her overly fixated perspective on genetics might lead to.
Psycho Mantis
“Humans weren’t designed to bring each other happiness. From the moment we’re thrown into this world, we’re fated to bring each other nothing but pain and misery.” – Psycho Mantis, Metal Gear Solid[YouTube]
Among his many skills, Psycho Mantis can use extra-sensory perception to peer into people's minds and read his/her future. In the movie The Shining (a Stanley Kubrick film), the family of a prolific writer decide to be the caretakers of a hotel somewhere in the middle of nowhere to get his mind back on track after experiencing writer's block. His young son, Danny, continually catches glimpses of the hotel's ugly past and scary premonitions of future events involving ghost-like figures and mass slaughter. His father eventually becomes subsumed by some malevolent spirit and starts playing with the psychotic fantasy of slaughtering his family. According to an interview with Kubrick, both Danny and the cook of the hotel, Halloran, can telepathically communicate with each other and be able to perceive these visions due to both of them having an innate gift known as extra-sensory perception - which Kubrick wholeheartedly thought to be real**.
Psycho Mantis is one of the members of FOXHOUND now under Liquid’s command. He represents a particular stratagem of military intelligence that the Russians tend to invest more heavily in than their American counterparts.
Psychic powers
As a matter of principle, Psycho Mantis has no need for his fists or guns of any sort. From an early age, Mantis has learned to utilize techniques such as extra-sensory perception, clairvoyance and psychokinesis to confuse his adversaries and thus wage a more sophisticated form of warfare against them.
Some brief explanation of the terms alluded to above is in order.
Extra-sensory perception (ESP)
“ESP research: determining the properties and condition of objects without ever making contact with them and “reading” peoples’ thoughts.” – Timothy L. Thomas, The Mind Has No Firewall, Parameters (Q1 1998), US Army War College Quarterly
Psycho Mantis flaunts these abilities at several points throughout the game. As part of Liquid Snake’s plan to retrieve the nuclear detonation codes so Metal Gear Rex is ready to launch a nuclear weapon, Mantis is instructed to peer into DARPA chief Donald Anderson’s mind and obtain the code. This attempt was a failure on his part – Donald Anderson had surgical implants attached to his brain that acted as a firewall for the mind – preventing his thoughts from being read. (ArmsTech CEO Donald Baker later informs Snake that this is more or less the rule rather than the exception among top brass in the defense industry – this is the first sign that Snake has been fed misinformation by the (purported) DARPA chief who died of a ’stroke’).
Because Meryl Silverburgh has no such mental safeguards, she was easy pickings for Psycho Mantis’ psycho-tronic warfare. He takes complete possession of Meryl at several instances to create a sizeable distance between Snake and her – this way he can control her without Snake catching on. The first time this happens, Snake experiences a mental feedback loop of some sort – Meryl heads for the elevator without waiting for Snake to catch up, then she fires an entire round of ammo at Snake for no real reason – merely to get him off her back – then the elevator finally goes up. After this, we get to see an image of Psycho Mantis inexplicably popping up out of nowhere.
When inquiring on what he thought he just saw, Naomi says it’s most likely ‘psychometric interference’ by Psycho Mantis. Again, this seems to be mostly grounded in real parapsychological research if we go by the following excerpt of the aforementioned US Army War College article, “The Mind Has No Firewall“:
“Solntsev also examined the problem of “information noise”, which creates a dense shield between a person and external reality. This noise may manifest itself in the form of signals, messages, images, or other items of information. The main target of this noise would be the consciousness of a person or a group of people. Behavior modification could be one objective of information noise; another could be to upset an individual’s mental capacity to such an extent as to prevent reaction to any stimulus. Solntsev concludes that all levels of a person’s psyche (subconscious, conscious, and “superconscious”) are potential targets for destabilization.” – Timothy L. Thomas, The Mind Has No Firewall, Parameters (Q1 1998), US Army War College Quarterly
Indeed, the “noise”/”interference” does seem to put up a shield between Meryl and her actual surroundings. Behavior modification seems to be most definitely at play here – in the scene described above, Meryl is not herself and seems to be in control by Mantis himself – but notice also that her mental capacity is so destabilized that she will also not respond to Snake’s pleas to ’snap out of it’. This will segue nicely into the following section of this paragraph, which concerns mind control – and the way in which Mantis actually achieves this hypnotic spell he casts on people’s minds.
Psychokinesis and mind control
“Psychokinesis research: interfering with the thoughts of individuals, on either the strategic or tactical level.” – Timothy L. Thomas, The Mind Has No Firewall, Parameters (Q1 1998), US Army War College Quarterly
The insurrection would have been impossible to pull off without loyal infantrymen safeguarding all the possible points of entry to the base – and, of course, they would prove indispensible for basic patrol, pursuit and reconaisssance work.
Located at the disposal facility were Next-Generation Special Forces units and Genome Soldiers – both having been subjected to gene therapy and being digital copies of Big Boss in their own right. Though some of them joined the FOXHOUND revolution on their own accord, the vast majority of them had to be conditioned in some way to go along with FOXHOUND’s takeover of the base.
This is where Psycho Mantis’ brainwashing techniques came into play. He managed to successfully brainwash the vast majority of the soldiers through a method of psychokinesis that puts the subject into a suggestible state with some form of psychic driving (a process whereby the victim is subjected to a continuously repeating audio message on tape – in this case, it’s a hymn that is looped over and over again). The end result is highly advantageous from a strategic standpoint: highly motivated obedient soldiers with the same ’soldier’ genes that distinguish Liquid and Solid from the rest of the pack.
Telekinesis
“Telekinesis research: actions involving the manipulation of physical objects using thought power, causing them to move or break apart – used against command and control (C2) systems, or to disrupt the functioning of weapons of mass destruction.” – Timothy L. Thomas, The Mind Has No Firewall, Parameters (Q1 1998), US Army War College Quarterly
Psycho Mantis is able to move physical objects by sheer willpower alone. He amply demonstrates this skill to the player by levitating statues, chairs, portraits inside the room and throwing them at Snake. It is ironic that this skill will ultimately redeem himself in the end. After having defeated him, he opens a hidden door for Snake that will lead him to Metal Gear Rex’s underground base. The last sentence he utters is a poignant reminder that had Psycho Mantis not given in to his anger and bitterness felt early on in his childhood, he could have used his extraordinary skills for noble ventures:
“This is the first time I’ve ever used my power to help someone. It’s strange… it feels… kind of… nice.” - Psycho Mantis, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
Another parting gift by Mantis – because Mantis possesses clairvoyance abilities (giving him the ability to observe objects that are not visible to the naked eye), he implants thoughts into Meryl’s mind that enable her to correctly traverse a path littered with unseen Claymore mines -all without incurring harm to herself or Snake.
Frank Jaeger/Gray Fox
“Technological and scientific innovation need not have direct bearing on nuclear or virological research to contribute to the making of weapons of mass destruction.
After all, the Ninja was born of genetic engineering and cybernetic research, which could easily have healed a civilian rather than improved upon a soldier. A scientist cannot plead naivete to the practical products of their own research. The consequences must be anticipated, and the ethical burden of a newly developed technology must ultimately rest with the individual researcher.” – Nastasha Romanenko, In The Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty
Just like the game foreshadowed (above), the military applications of exoskeletons have not been lost on the likes of Raytheon (Raytheon Sarcos exoskeleton) and Lockheed Martin (Human Universal Load Carrier).
Solid Snake last came face to face with his former friend in Zanzibarland – on opposite sides of the fence. Both felt it their duty to fulfill their part as proverbial pieces on a grand chessboard – an obligation ranking above friendship or family values. After Snake’s mission in Zanzibarland, Gray Fox was presumed to have died at the hands of his lifelong friend, Solid Snake. This caused Naomi some considerable grief given that Frank Jaeger was her only connection to the past (Jaeger never had the stomach to inform Naomi about the truth behind his decision to raise Naomi – he killed her parents only to show reluctance at having to kill her too – as he later tells Snake: “I was young then, and couldn’t bring myself to kill her too”)
Transhumanist soldier
“We’re not tools of the government or anyone else. Fighting was the only thing, the only thing I was good at, but… At least I always fought for what I believed in. – Frank Jaeger/Gray Fox, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
In truth, Frank survived the fight – albeit horribly wounded and left hanging by a mere thread of his life (most of his body and limbs had been lost due to the impact of several landmines). FOXHOUND’s chief medic, Dr. Clark (nickname ‘Para-Medic’), relished the opportunity to use him as a guinea pig for a new type of project that would combine the field of gene-therapy with cybernetics.
Using the remains of his body as the base for a new type of exoskeleton suit with metallic prosthetics, he was metamorphosed into a ‘cyborg’ ninja. To keep him properly sedated and to alleviate some of the pain, he was fed a heavy dosage of psychotropic drugs. This went on for the better part of four years until Naomi Hunter joined FOXHOUND’s medical staff as an assistant to Dr Clark.
Upon learning this cybernetic ‘Ninja’ was in actuality Gray Fox, she came up with a plan to help him assist in his escape, and take out Dr Clark in the process. (the latter was an act not out of revenge, but by orders of Eva – Dr Clark also happened to be one of the founding members of The Patriots – and therefore ranked high on the hit-list of the anti-Patriots faction that Eva represented).
Sniper Wolf
Sniper Wolf is most likely modelled after famous World War II Soviet Union female sharpshooters (unlike the militaries of other nations such as the US, in the Marxist state both men and women were trained to become snipers). Pictured below is Nina Alexeyevna Lobkovskaya, Russian sharpshooter in WWII, managing an impressive 308 kills.
Sniper Wolf is an Iraqi-Kurdish female sniper of Unit FOXHOUND.
Given the environment in which she was raised in and the harsh living standards that came par for the course (as a Kurd she would be hunted down like dogs and a friend or relative would wind up dead on a daily occasion), she became to identify with the wolf as a personification of herself. Hence it is of no surprise that she objected when the terrorists were planning to put the dogs out of commission when they took over the facility – hence that is why they have given her the nickname. She regularly tends to the wolves as if they are her own family.
On the Origin Of Domestication
“In the Middle East, we don’t hunt foxes, we hunt jackals. Instead of foxhounds, we use royal harriers.” – Liquid Snake, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
Dogs all seem to share one common ancestor: the wolf. There is some debate as to whether wolves ‘evolved’ into dogs by ‘artificial selection’ or ‘natural selection’ (Dawkins would argue the latter in this article from the Times Online, “The Truth Dogs Reveal About Evolution” – but what he really seems to imply is that it’s a mixture of both) – but let’s focus on ‘artificial selection’.
Obviously, a wolf would be a rather dangerous animal to have around as a pet – and too unreliable and self-deterministic to be used as a hunting dog. So a ‘domestication’ and ‘breeding process’ had to be enacted by humans to instill certain traits into the offspring of these animals. Through trial and error, naturalists discovered that by interbreeding less ferocious samples of the species, the outcome would be an even more docile pup. Gradually, by selective breeding, these ‘wolves’ would lose their survival instinct and ‘flight distance’ and instead come to view humans in the same way as they would their mother or father.
This was where the original idea for eugenics came into being – naturalists were convinced that if specific traits could be inculcated into animals by selective breeding programs, the same could naturally be applied to humans. But without digressing too much, at a specific point in time, Dawkins and Coppinger would wager that the wolf lowered its self defense – what they like to term its ‘flight distance’ – the amount of distance between the wolf and a human before the wolf senses danger and makes off or (if aggravated) attack. They would argue this lowering of the flight distance was due to the wolf needing to adapt to its environment and having to find a new food source.
So, if this phenomena – what Dawkins likes to term ’self-domestication’ – came about naturally and explains how wolfs eventually became to be domesticated dogs, could the same be applied to humans or social organizations? Do they, too, lower their flight distance over time and eventually become the prey and the mere cattle of a more able predator? Or do they fight back and try to retain their innate survival instinct? And, if the latter, do they fail as a consequence? That would be as nice a metaphor as any and in keeping with the ’survival of the fittest’ mantra of Herbert Spencer and Darwin alike.
Social organizations and subsumation
The wolves that Sniper Wolf looks after are what
During the Cold War, the CIA-led special operations unit FOX featured such notable names as Naked Snake (AKA Big Boss) and The Boss (Big Boss’ mentor). It wasn’t until after Snake had left the unit and a decade had passed that FOX eventually became rogue and was dead set on attacking the Soviet Union. Obviously fearing the repercussions of such a bold move, Naked Snake and Roy Campbell were sent in to subsume the threat. They formed a special outfit called ‘FOXHOUND’ (the ‘foxhound’ hunts the ‘fox’ – get it?) that had as its specific mission statement to fight against the rebelling members of FOX, and clear the names of the remaining FOX members who were not made complicit in FOX having gone rogue.
After the events of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (during which this rebellion takes place), FOX is put to pastures and FOXHOUND takes its place. This takes us to the series of events surrounding the first Metal Gear installment, Metal Gear (for the MSX/NES). Gray Fox[7] is being held captive in rogue state Outer Heaven and Solid Snake (still a rookie at this point) joins FOXHOUND and is sent in to get him out. It eventually turns out that Big Boss himself had not only chosen Solid Snake specifically to head the rescue operation (he could count on him being relatively inexperienced and being the recessive one out of the two ‘Les Enfants Terribles’ designer sons), but that he was behind Outer Heaven itself – thus, FOXHOUND was compromised from the top down.
After Big Boss was defeated in battle by Solid Snake, Roy Campbell assumed command of FOXHOUND. He retired somewhere between 1999 and 2005, with Liquid Snake taking his place. Under Liquid’s leadership, FOXHOUND became rogue like its predecessor FOX before it – and it took a retired Colonel Campbell being coerced into donning his CO cap again and a similarly blackmailed Solid Snake (who had given up on the job after Zanzibar) to take them out of commission.
Fittingly, instead of the ‘fox hound’ subsuming the ‘fox’ like before, this time a venomous snake was sent in that would infect the ‘fox hound’ and let it die a slow death – but at the snake’s own expense eventually. We see here a recurring pattern of one particular social organisation becoming too foolhardy – too risky – and losing that ‘optimal flight distance’ it once had – that convenient middle ground between too bold and too flighty. It is then domesticated in rapid succession by a follow-up and eventually subsumed – but the successor will repeat the same mistake over again and the cycle repeats itself.
Humans and self-domestication
“I finally understand. I wasn’t waiting to kill people… I was waiting for someone to kill me… A man like you… You’re a hero. Please… set me free…”[8] – Sniper Wolf, Metal Gear Solid[Youtube]
But there’s another parallel. Psycho Mantis made it known to Solid Snake that this “selfish, atavistic desire to pass on one’s seed” inherent in each and every living thing on this planet was enough to make him physically ill. In a similar vein, Sniper Wolf has no real wish to pass something on to the next generation – whether it be an idea/concept or a child.
Time and time again, it is established that nearly every FOXHOUND member Snake takes out has given up the sheer willpower to pass something on because of what they experienced in their traumatic childhood that shaped them to become the way they are now. You could make the case that Sniper Wolf was shortening her “flight distance” partly out of some “self-domesticating” process – but the only domestication process available in her line of work is to either become a stooge for your paymasters (in which case you become the proverbial ‘dog of war’), or stick to your pride and hope that someone on the battlefield will eventually put you out of ‘retirement’.
Nastasha Romanenko
“According to the military doctrine which is the basis for NATO expansion, a preemptive nuclear strike may be undertaken if there is a sufficient threat of a regional conflict spreading to a large-scale war.”[9] – Nastasha Romanenko, Metal Gear Solid
This Ukrainan woman holds very strong views on the issue of nuclear technology - partly as a result of losing her parents and being rendered insterile by the radiation in the Chernobyl Disaster. The number of people she portends to have died as a result of the disaster has been proven to be the result of wideranging misinformation on the part of the media***.
Nastasha Romanenko is a freelance Ukrainian weapons analyst. She provides Snake with information on nuclear weapons and general weapon systems through codec.
DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) officer Richard Ames (coincidentally her ex-husband) forced her into accepting the mission assignment. As a member of NEST (Nuclear Emergency Search Team), she would prove to be an essential asset to Snake’s support team given her immense wealth of knowledge on nuclear matters.
As she became privy to all the shenanigans of the mission and Ames’ somewhat coy demeanor, she started to suspect more sinister motives were afoot here. Eventually she learns that a cabal led in part by Ames and Secretary of Defense Jim Houseman are really running the show – and were using Snake not as part of a rescue operation, but as part of a contingency plan that would leave Metal Gear Rex intact at the expense of every single living thing inside the base.
The information that Snake was to retrieve from Kenneth Baker (CEO of ArmsTech) – the data disc – was the only item of importance, but seeing as Ocelot (a double agent working in secret for George Sears, the 43rd President of the United States) made off with the data and Metal Gear Rex was already destroyed by Snake, there was no further reason for The Patriots to muck about. It’s at this point that Jim Houseman exerts complete control over the operation and starts removing key personnel from Snake’s support team, eventually removing Snake’s CO entirely – rendering him a sitting duck. Being an asset of The Patriots, Houseman then orders a nuclear strike on the facility – in an effort to cover up the whole event.
More and more Nastasha begins to realize that, given her security detail, she is not safe, either. To protect herself, she attempts to transmit important data from her cell phone to a remote server whenever Ames isn’t around (hint: the toilet). But Ames later reveals to her it was all fruitless anyway – the military equipment they installed at her home in order to communicate with Snake intercepted the ‘data’ before it ever got to its destination.
Motivation – Abolition of Nuclear Weapons
There is a heavy-handed nuclear weapons abolitionist bend to the Metal Gear Solid series – but nowhere is this more pronounced than in Nastasha’s character.
The McGuffin of the game is a large bipedal tank capable of launching a nuclear warhead without the need for a rocket propulsion system. This makes it undetectable by radar. Conveniently, Metal Gear REX falls outside the scope of any currently existing nuclear non-proliferation treaties – and can ostensibly be sold as a theater missile defense system with the client remaining none of the wiser of its capacity to carry and fire ICBMs.
Whoever gets hold of Metal Gear REX would cause an immediate rift in the global power structure and potentially upset the future signing of any START-type treaties. For those unfamiliar with the Cold War, these were treaties signed between the Soviet Union and the United States aimed at reducing the stockpile of nuclear weapons. At worst, a weapon like Metal Gear REX could be the prime instigator for World War III – as it gives any country in the world a first-strike capability that other nationstates will find hard to counter.
Obviously the recurring anti-nuclear message is an issue Hideo went to great lengths to include all throughout the games – he laments that the current generation was born into a world where nuclear deterrence capacities are regarded as the norm. Hideo has said in an interview with a videogame website, that by including these messages into his videogames, he hopes he can get people to think about the need for ‘wars’, ‘armies’ or ‘nuclear weapons’.
Government coverup
The Shadow Moses Incident, if ever brought to light, would bring so many illegitimate black-ops activities by the federal government into the spotlight that it would put a massive dent in the US government’s credibility.
Plausible deniability
Instead of outright denying the story, then, the US government instead opts for a more subtle approach to information warfare – namely, muddy the waters. It presents to the public what it purports to be a factual account of the incident (while in reality being merely a tissue of lies and omissions), and through the fourth branch of the government, the media, it attempts to ridicule any alternative viewpoint that might go against the official story.
Nastasha Romanenko’s book
In an effort to reveal the truth on what happened that day, Nastasha Romanenko pens a hefty book detailing her involvement in the events leading up to the Shadow Moses Incident. Mainstream media coverage veers from semi-serious op-eds to complete disbelief.
In the second game (Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty), it is established that The Patriots see themselves as the arbiter of all information trafficking – they want to control all flows of information and the ability to gauge the ‘accuracy’ or ‘context’ of such information before allowing it to be released in the wider world. From a Darwinian perspective, they act as the process of ‘natural selection’ – only certain ‘genes’ (in this case memes – units of information) are allowed to pass themselves on to the next generation (or, within the context of this example: the written word; the Internet; music; movies; documentaries; videogames). But even with The Patriots’ vast monopoly of the media and its sway on public opinion, they are still not able to exert their control each and every book that gets printed by a small publishing house.
Psy-op piece
“But even if you had managed to get this data out into the world, that wouldn’t have guaranteed your safety. No one would have believed yet another conspiracy theory, least of all the press.” – Richard Ames to Nastasha Romanenko, In the Darkness of Shadow Moses : The Unofficial Truth, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty
So in the case of Nastasha Romanenko’s book, The Patriots decide to engage in another operation – that of a counter-psychological operation (psy-op in short). They get another author, a ‘purported’ beat reporter who appears to be nothing of the sort, to write a totally fictitious and off-the-wall backstory around Nastasha Romanenko’s book – and release it as an unofficial abridged version of Nastasha’s book.
This book, called ‘The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses‘, by Gary McGolden, reveals its mock-satirical intent early on in the story. It begins with the author revealing to the reader that he was abducted by aliens in his early childhood – and that ever since then he has a small hole behind his ears. After this mundane excursion into UFO/Area 51-territory, he starts weaving in Nastasha Romanenko’s Shadow Moses book into the largely fictional backstory that is the whole premise behind his book[10].
By mixing in the ridiculous with the factual information provided by Romanenko, they (The Patriots) succeed in discrediting the whole story in the court of public opinion. Eventually, Shadow Moses joins the pantheon of ‘conspiracy theories’ that are so often the focus of ridicule by the mainstream press. Just like in the real world, the kneejerk attitude to label everything and anything a ‘conspiracy theory’ betrays a certain self-governing mindset – an analogy can perhaps be found in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four/1984. In that book (and the very good 1984 movie), basic trains of thought are divided into roughly two categories: ‘doublethink‘ and ‘thoughtcrime‘. The language itself has been butchered so immensely that almost all semblance of meaning has been lost, and the public has been rendered illiterate to the point that they can no longer argue or debate something based on the relative merits of a given theory – nor do they feel any need to pontificate or elaborate on a given subject unless told by the established media to talk about it. What’s more, the language does not allow for any of those subtleties.
‘Thoughtcrime‘ encompasses all negative things that could ever be attributed to a given subject – whether it be ‘plagiarism’, ‘fraud’, ‘anti-government sentiments’, ‘conspiracy theory-mongering’, ‘heresy’, and so on. In a similar way, the word ‘conspiracy theory’ is used today as an all-encompassing term to swipe any subject under the rug and provoke an instant knee-jerk reaction amongst one’s peer group – to get them to regard the individual engaging in ‘conspiratorial thinking’ as a ‘nut’ or a ‘crazy person’. The relative merits and the arguments which he presents to support this theory does not even so much matter – what matters is that he has been attached with this stigma that automatically excludes him from his peer group who regard themselves to be relatively sane.
Meaning behind words/names/terms
For more trivia, visit IMDB’s Trivia page for Metal Gear Solid.
| Name/word | Meaning | Object |
|---|---|---|
| Asymmetry Theory | By this, Liquid is probably referring to the concept of ‘genetic diversity’. | Concept |
| ‘brave, new world order’ | ‘brave, new world’ obviously refers to Aldous Huxley’s dystopic novel ‘Brave New World’; ‘New world order‘ refers to the term bandied about by politicians as diverse as Mikhail Gorbachev, George H.W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Gordon Brown, and numerous others – it was also used in a shortened form by Adolf Hitler (‘New Order‘). It refers to a drastic upcoming change in world policy and society. It was also the subject of H.G. Wells‘ non-fiction books ‘The New World Order‘ and ‘The Open Conspiracy‘. | Dialogue excerpt |
| Deepthroat | Pseudonym adopted by Frank Jaeger to pass information to Solid Snake anonymously (people who have played Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake will be able to recognize immediately who is doing this). A reference to the Watergate scandal – the informant who passed information to investigator Bob Woodward used this pseudonym. Up until 2005 – it remained an enigma who was behind Deep Throat. In 2005, Vanity Fair revealed what many had long suspected – that William Mark Felt was Deep Throat. | Character pseudonym |
| Frank Jaeger | His last name ‘Jaeger’ is German for ‘hunter’. | Character |
| Gray Fox | Most likely a reference to Darwin’s Fox – which he (Charles Darwin) and others believed to be related to the South American Gray Fox. | Character name |
| Naomi Hunter | The last name adopted by Naomi (‘Hunter’) in a way is a dead giveaway that she is related to Frank Jaeger (see above etymological explanation). | Character |
| Richard Ames | Named after the ‘Ames’ strain – the bacterial strain used for the 2001 Anthrax attacks following 9/11 (the Ames strain is under near total control of the US biodefense program). It has been pretty much conclusively proven that the Anthrax attacks were an inside job – with Senator Patrick Leahy even suggesting ‘cover-up’ and a ‘criminal conspiracy’ inside the U.S. bioweapons industry. | Character name |
| Rivermore National Labs | Co-developers of Metal Gear REX in the game. Is this an innocuous mistranslation of ‘Livermore National Labs‘ on the part of the English translators, or just precaution on Hideo Kojima’s part as to not implicate any real non-fictional organizations into the game’s fictional black-ops project? Livermore is home to some of the world’s top supercomputers. |
Company |
| Selfish Gene Theory | A reference to Richard Dawkins‘ 1976 book ‘The Selfish Gene‘. | Concept |
| Sigint | DARPA chief Donald Anderson’s nickname. According to the backstory, Donald Anderson was one of the co-developers of ARPANET – the predecessor of the Internet. Important to note in this context is that DARPA was originally known as ARPA – hence the name. SIGINT is military shorthand for ’signals intelligence’. In computer operating systems, SIGINT refers to a POSIX-compliant signal that a computer terminal sends to a process when a user wishes to “interrupt” that process. | Character nickname |
| ‘The Twin Snakes’ | The subtitle of the 2004 GameCube remake. This seems to carry a double meaning – on a more superficial level it refers to Solid Snake and Liquid Snake. On a more esoteric level, it refers to the ‘dual snake’ imagery of the ‘double helix‘. The ‘double helix‘ is the structure of DNA that is at the root of Solid and Liquid’s creation – since they are both copies of Big Boss by way of DNA manipulation and somatic cell cloning. | Subtitle of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes |
Footnotes
1. [^]The following articles all approach the series’ storyline from a somewhat different perspective, and they all make for highly interesting reading. None of them are specifically about ‘Metal Gear Solid 1′, though, which gave me an opportunity to add something to the equation here.
Link: – http://junkerhq.net/MGS2/ (JunkerHQ: An analysis on genetics, evolution and information regarding Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty)
Link: – http://www.adilegian.com/patriotslegacy.htm (The Patriots’ Legacy – by James Clinton Howell)
Link: – http://www.metalgearsolid.org/Articles/Features/a-comparison-between-orwells-q1984q-and-kojimas-qmetal-gear-solidq-series.html (MGS TUS: A Comparison Between Orwell’s “1984″ and Kojima’s “Metal Gear Solid” Series)
2. [^]Since Metal Gear Solid’s release in 1998, Gulf War veterans have made some progress in their fight for recognition and treatment of various diseases incurred in the Gulf War. For starters, the misnomer ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has been jettisoned by psychiatrists in favour of ‘Gulf War Illness’ – previously Gulf War veterans were being told it was ‘all in the head’ – now real substantial evidence has emerged that the exposure to sarin gas has had some detrimental health effects. The experimental Anthrax vaccinations using squalene as an additive were also found to be highly unsafe and unreliable – but they are not seen as the prime cause of the Gulf War Illness.
Link: – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_Illness (Wikipedia: Gulf War Illness)
Link: – http://www.bu.edu/bostonia/spring09/gulf-war/ (Bostonia: Gulf War Syndrome Gets real – BU experts evaluate the science for landmark federal report – Spring 2009)
Link: – http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/03/24/gulf-war-syndrome-may-stem-from-chemical-exposure.html (US News: Gulf War Syndrome May Stem From Chemical Exposure – 3/24/2009)
Link: – http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2008/11/18/gulf-war-syndrome-is-a-real-illness-federal-study-finds/ (Discover Magazine: Gulf War Syndrome Is a Real Illness, Federal Study Finds – 18/11/2008)
Link: – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090901150944.htm (Science Daily: Researches To Discuss New Study On Gulf War Illness Treatment At Military Health Research Forum – 1/9/2009)
3. [^]Inbreeding has always been endemic in the upper classes – owing to the human-directed breeding experiments that had taught them the art of breeding in certain traits and characteristics into cattle. They figured the same could be applied to humans, and that if an elite family with ’superior’ genes interbred with each other, the result would be even more prodigious offspring.
This turned out not to be the case, however, and the Darwin family is a prime example of this. Charles Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgewood, and produced 10 children with her – all suffering from one particular health affliction or another. What worried Darwin most of all was that nearly all of his children had inherited his own health ailments. For instance, Charles Darwin had this propensity for stress-induced vomiting – which his daughter Henrietta inherited. At least two of his children died – one while still an infant (Charles the younger), the other dying at the age of 10 (Annie). Darwin suspected Major Leonard Darwin of being “rather slow and backward”; his second daughter, Elizabeth, “shivers & makes as many extraordinary grimaces as ever”.
Several of his sons and daughters did manage to land their way into prestigious institutions where they carried the baton for ‘eugenics’ – Major Leonard Darwin in particular was made President of the International Congress On Eugenics (an incredible honor bestowed on Darwin’s son given that Francis Galton was the preceding President and had been for all intents and purposes the grandfather of the entire movement)
This article from the University of Alberta, Canada suggests that the Darwin family, fearing that their inbred and dysgenic traits prevented them from having a normal lifestyle, applied their own insecurities and dysgenic nature to society at large – a genetic case of ‘passing the buck’ in the name of a feigned ‘deep concern with the proliferation of sub-normal working class children in town” – all of which perhaps were of more healthy breeding stock than the Darwins intent on passing through all sorts of enforced eugenic laws.
Link: – http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jan/19/charles-darwin (Guardian.co.uk: Steve Jones Explores The Obscure Chapters of Charles Darwin’s Life – 01/19/2009)
Link: – http://www.folio.ualberta.ca/36/08/05.html (University of Alberta: Eugenics began as a family affair, says historian – Evolutionary theorist feared inbreeding in his own clan – 11/12/1998)
Link: – http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_9_114/ai_n15855369/ (Natural History: Good breeding: Darwin doubted his own family’s “fitness.”)
4. [^]A document published by the Project For The New American Century (a neoconservative thinktank) in 2000, written exactly a year before 9/11, alluded to this and other potential avenues for American military dominance throughout the 21st century. The document was entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” and can be read in full on their homepage.
It also insinuated that this ‘process of transformation’ (as in: the transformation from a more restrained military doctrine to a more active and ambitious one) would be slow, unless some precipitating event were to occur that would be on the scale of Pearl Harbor. Read into that what you will.
Link: – http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf (New American Century: Defense and National Security – Rebuilding America’s Defenses – September 2000 [PDF])
5. [^]Numerous parallels exist between Snake’s mission briefing and the one Snake Plissken receives in Escape From New York (obviously, it has long since been established that Solid Snake/Big Boss are modelled after the Snake Plissken character – right down to Naked Snake/Snake Plissken’s eyepatch and voice actor David Hayter’s gruff imitation of Kurt Russell)
- Blackmail
- In Metal Gear Solid: Solid Snake has retired from FOXHOUND and is forcibly dragged into a mission briefing room. Solid Snake and Snake Plissken both show indifference to serving their nation or any loyalty to the Flag.
- In Escape From New York: Snake Plissken is a convicted criminal and bank robber that is being forced by the US Government to go it alone in a top-secret mission to rescue the President – who has been taken hostage somewhere in the maximum-state security prison known as New York. Like Snake in MGS, he tells his Commander he doesn’t give a damn about his country or the President.
- Injections/Virus
- In Metal Gear Solid: Solid Snake is given various injections – ranging from an anti-freezing peptide to nootropics. What Snake isn’t told, however, is that as part of the injection he contracted an RNA retrovirus that has the ability to target specific gene sequences in specifically designated people and cause immediate cardiac arrests. Worse, Naomi later reveals to Snake that she included him as part of the ‘dead list’ – but set the incubation rate to a random number. Like the NEXUS-6 replicant Leon relays to Blade Runner Deckard: “Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch.”
When Snake shows reluctance at being inoculated by Naomi, she soothingly alleviates his fear by responding in a thick British accent: “What’s wrong? [giggle] You don’t like shots?[Youtube]“ - In Escape From New York: Snake Plissken is injected with microscopic explosives that will blow open his arteries in 24 hours. This is to dissuade Snake from abandoning the mission and trying to run off. He is promised that, in the likelihood he completes the mission successfully, they will defuse the explosives. Unlike Solid Snake, Snake Plissken is told this beforehand almost immediately after the inoculation.
Snake Plissken comments at one point: “I don’t like needles”.
- In Metal Gear Solid: Solid Snake is given various injections – ranging from an anti-freezing peptide to nootropics. What Snake isn’t told, however, is that as part of the injection he contracted an RNA retrovirus that has the ability to target specific gene sequences in specifically designated people and cause immediate cardiac arrests. Worse, Naomi later reveals to Snake that she included him as part of the ‘dead list’ – but set the incubation rate to a random number. Like the NEXUS-6 replicant Leon relays to Blade Runner Deckard: “Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch.”
- Radar
- In Metal Gear Solid: Snake is told that one of the hostages he needs to rescue, DARPA chief Donald Anderson, has been injected with a location device that gives off a signal. This can be picked up by his Soliton radar system.
- In Escape From New York: The President wears a vital signs bracelet on his arm – Snake is given a radar device that can pick up the signal.
- Geopolitical summit/meeting within given deadline
- In Metal Gear Solid: Snake is told that the President Of The United States and the President of the Russian Federation are scheduled within the given time limit (24 hours) to host a summit where the START III treaty will be signed.
- In Escape From New York: The leaders of the United States, China and the Soviet Union are set to host a meeting within the given time limit (24 hours) where an important issue will be discussed – nuclear fusion.
PS: obviously, the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1990, and Escape From New York takes place in 1997; at the time of the film’s release (1981), it seemed highly unlikely that the Soviet Union would be gone by 1997
This article by N’Gai Croal in Newsweek points to even more similarities between the ‘Escape From’ franchise and Metal Gear Solid. The cancelled screenplay for the 1995 prequel to Escape From New York, Escape From LA, features a villain that has succeeded in creating numerous clone copies of Snake Plissken. He intends to turn a sizeable profit by selling them to mercenaries and guerrilla fighters (and this is key: since this is the prequel to Escape From New York and Snake Plissken somehow succeeds in blowing himself up along with the entire factory plant containing the clones, this would entail that the Snake Plissken we get to see in Escape From New York is one of the few surviving clones – just like Solid Snake is a clone of Big Boss).
Link: – Escape From New York (1981): (1 | 2)
Link: – http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/10/01/more-parallels-between-metal-gear-solid-and-escape-from-new-york.aspx (Newsweek: The Twin Snakes – Examining More Curious Parallels Between The Franchises Metal Gear Solid and “Escape From New York” – 1/10/2007)
6. [^]Even the music sounds similar at places – for instance, compare the game’s ‘Escape’ theme from the soundtrack to the end credits theme Vangelis did for Blade Runner. When listening to the ‘Escape’ theme music track, go to 0:53 to hear the sound effects reminiscent of the ones Vangelis used in the Blade Runner soundtrack. There are doubtless other tracks in the Metal Gear Solid soundtrack that have a similar Vangelis vibe to them.
7. [^]Gray Fox (the character) is most likely a reference to Darwin’s Fox. This was a peculiar wolf found on San Pedro Island that was mistaken by Charles Darwin for being a fox – hence the title Darwin’s Fox. He took a specimen with him during his infamous HMS Beagle voyage. According to Wikipedia, it was long held that Darwin’s Fox was a subspecies of the South American Gray Fox.
Link: – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Fox (Wikipedia: Darwin’s Fox)
Link: – http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/darwins-wolf/ (Wired: Darwin’s Wolf Mystery Solved – 3/11/2009) [other wolves that caught Darwin's interest whose origins remained a mystery - until now]
8. [^]Several of Sniper Wolf’s cutscenes evoke memories of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Just like in the movie, a female sniper shoots a soldier (Meryl Silverburgh in this case) in the field with the intention of drawing in more comrades that will come rushing in to his/her aid. Snake is left with no option but to retreat, find himself a sniper rifle and return back to the position where Meryl was shot so he can try to take her out. Unlike the North-Vietnamese sniper in Full Metal Jacket, Sniper Wolf does not seem intent on killing Meryl – when Snake returns, Meryl is gone and has been taken into captivity. It’s up to the player to decide later on whether Meryl will live or die (the canonical ending is the one where she lives. Before Metal Gear Solid 4: The Guns Of The Patriots was announced, it was erroneously assumed that Meryl had died.)
Another sequence highly reminiscent of Full Metal Jacket is the one where Sniper Wolf (as a final request to Snake before she dies) asks him to hand her the gun she has been using up until this point.
“My gun… give it to me. She’s a part of me…” – Sniper Wolf, Metal Gear Solid
This is part of the military indoctrination process – what’s known as the Rifleman’s Creed. The intent is to create a symbiotic bond between the soldier’s mere existence as a human being and his military artillery, such as a rifle. It states in no uncertain terms that a soldier is useless without his rifle, and that he should protect it as if it were his best friend. After having to recite this ‘creed’ day in day out, it becomes so ingrained in the person’s mind that he or she really starts to identify with this ‘piece’ of wood and iron as a surrogate spouse. As can be seen in Sniper Wolf, it has certainly had its desired effect on her.
Link: – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifleman%27s_Creed (Wikipedia: Rifleman’s Creed)
Link: – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G551KpNnA0 (Full Metal Jacket: Rifleman’s Creed)
9. [^]What Nastasha is referring to here is what is known as the NUTS (Nuclear Utilization Target Selection) doctrine – which has been formally adopted by NATO. In essence it is the exact opposite of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), which was the agreed-upon doctrine between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
MAD is a doctrine that acts on the presupposition that both competing countries have such a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons that it would be foolhardy for any of the two nations to strike each other – since it would result in the annihilation of both. Several science fiction novels and movies entertain such a scenario actually unfolding – but by the involvement of an unknown third party – a sentient supercomputer that provokes Russia into attacking the US with a full nuclear payload by attacking it [Russia] first with nuclear weapons – resulting in the annihilation of both countries and much of the worldwide human population – but leaving the sentient supercomputer (which is largely situated underground) mostly intact to inherit the Earth along with its progeny. Examples such as Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream comes to mind, as well as the movie franchise which plagiarized its central plot premise – The Terminator.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, MAD largely fell out of favour due to hubrism on the part of the western allies. Lately there has been much heated controversy surrounding the missile shield being built in Poland and Ukraine – which Russia regards as an imminent threat to its nuclear deterrence strategy.
President Obama has not been forthright on this issue – in this misleadingly titled article, ‘Obama scraps Bush-era Europe missile shield‘, it says that the previous missile shield program has been ’scrapped’ in favor of a more cost-effective and proven equivalent. It thus by no means lauds the end of this provocative gamble in nuclear standoffs – and the rhetoric about it being intended for a hypothetical Iranian ‘missile threat’ reeks of regurgitated Bush-era war propaganda.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates – an accomplice in the Iran-Contra scandal, friend of foreign policy hawk Zbigniew Brzezinski, and most likely the founder of the CIA’s Arab Legion – seems as determined as ever to get a missile shield into place.
Link: – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_utilization_target_selection (Wikipedia: Nuclear utilization target selection)
Link: – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction (Wikipedia: Mutual Assured Destruction)
Link: – http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32889934/ (Obama scraps Bush-era Europe missile shield – 17/9/2009)
Link: – http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/17/AR2009091700639.html?hpid=topnews (MSNBC: Obama Shifts Focus Of Missile Shield – 18/9/2009)
Link: – http://russiatoday.com/Politics/2009-10-20/al-qaeda-cia-arab.html (Russia Today: ‘Al-Qaeda is CIA Arab Legion’ – 10/20/2009)
10. [^]An obvious sign (as if it needs any telling) that Gary McGolden has concocted a satirical piece can be found in the name given to his partner-in-chief, John-Dee (‘a hardcore Alaskan and a tuna fisherman’, apparently). He approaches this man for advice on how to get into the offshore nuclear disposal facility (Shadow Moses), which is off-limits to the general public. Besides the fact that the solution he comes up with is patently absurd, the name is the biggest give-away that the author is having some fun with its readership – ‘John Dee’ (1527-1608) was by all accounts the first international secret agent in world history, and the inspiration behind Ian Fleming’s character James Bond.
Like Bond, John Dee was a secret agent travelling all across the world at Her Majesty’s behest (at the time Queen Elizabeth I of England). He used ‘007′ as his personal alias to the Queen – the double ‘O’s were supposed to represent her Majesty’s eyes (as in: John Dee served as her majesty’s eyes and ears while abroad). John Dee’s main business while travelling the world was in promoting ‘free trade’ – in essence, what this meant was getting foreign countries to adopt and work with Britain’s financial system with as minimal amount of fuss as possible. This could be a likely explanation for why Ian Fleming’s character has as his last name ‘Bond’ – as a reference to the stock-in-trade (pun not intended) of his real-life inspiration.
Link: – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/uk/2000/newsmakers/2503023.stm (BBC: Will the real James Bond stand up? – 22/11/2002)
Link: – http://cosmiccipher.blogspot.com/2006/11/james-bond-007-john-dee-royale-tale.html (The Cosmic Cipher: James Bond 007 & John Dee – A Royal Tale – 13/11/2006))
*. The gene-centered view on evolution has received a lot of criticism from evolutionary biologists and scientists alike. The most well-spoken of these is Richard C. Lewontin. As a geneticist himself, he has been a leading critic of scientific doctrine and ideology – in particular Neo-Darwinism. This interview conducted by the University of California comes as highly recommended.
Link: – http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Lewontin/lewontin-con0.html (Science and Politics: Conversation with Richard C. Lewontin)
Link: – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBZJWyGh1EI (YouTube: Conversations with History – Richard C. Lewontin)
**. From an interview with Michel Ciment:
“Stanley Kubrick: Since I have always been interested in the topic, I think I was as well informed as I needed to be. I hope that ESP and related psychic phenomena will eventually find general scientific proof of their existence. There are certainly a fair number of scientists who are sufficiently impressed with the evidence to spend their time working in the field.”
Kubrick wasn’t alone in this – he was most likely swayed by Arthur Koestler’s ‘The Roots Of Coincidence‘ – one of the first books published in the West that came out in defense of parapsychology and suggested a possible scientific basis for it by connecting the dots between concepts such as extra-sensory perception and elements of quantum mechanics. In a letter Kubrick wrote in defense of A Clockwork Orange, he lashed out at someone who suggested a ‘fascist’ subtext to the film by challenging him whether or not he had read Arthur Koestler’s book The Ghost In The Machine – a book by an ‘anti-fascist’ which Kubrick felt perfectly represented some of his views and influences while making the film.
Link: – http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.ts.html (Stanley Kubrick On The Shining: An Interview with Michel Ciment)
Link: – http://books.google.com/books?id=apbst3-ZYNoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false (Google Books – Kubrick: The Definitive Edition – by Michel Ciment)
Link: – http://books.google.com/books?id=hU05AAAAIAAJ&q=the+roots+of+coincidence&dq=the+roots+of+coincidence (Google Books – The Roots Of Coincidence – by Arthur Koestler – 1972)
Link: – http://books.google.com/books?id=GobyYUN_Jl8C&q=the+ghost+in+the+machine&dq=the+ghost+in+the+machine (Google Books – The Ghost In The Machine – by Arthur Koestler – 1967)
***. Michael Crichton points out in this article that the number of deaths and injured by radiation due to the Chernobyl Disaster are massively exaggerated.
“The initial reports in 1986 claimed 2,000 dead, and an unknown number of future deaths and deformities occurring in a wide swath extending from Sweden to the Black Sea. As the years passed, the size of the disaster increased; by 2000, the BBC and New York Times estimated 15,000-30,000 dead, and so on…
Now, to report that 15,000-30,000 people have died, when the actual number is 56, represents a big error. Let’s try to get some idea of how big. Suppose we line up all the victims in a row. If 56 people are each represented by one foot of space, then 56 feet is roughly the distance from me to the fourth row of the auditorium. Fifteen thousand people is three miles away. It seems difficult to make a mistake of that scale.”[Michaelcrichton.com]
According to an United Nations report in 2005, the “largest public health problem created by the accident” was the “damaging psychological impact [due] to a lack of accurate information… [manifesting] as negative self-assessments of health, belief in a shortened life expectancy, lack of initiative, and dependency on assistance from the state.”.
In other words, the mere information and massively overinflated impact it would have on life expectancy, miscarriages and genetic defects – the mere psychological shock factor led to a self-fulfilling prophecy. This, in itself, could be regarded as a psychological operation, or, more pertinently, a quasi-biofeedback loop (quasi in the sense that there’s no measuring of a person’s bodily functions involved, such as blood pressure, heart rate, skin temperature, muscle tension, and so on). The vast majority of people who experienced some type of defect from the Chernobyl disaster – it is stated here – rendered themselves sick on their own accord based on the information they were fed.
Contrast this to what Nastasha says during the game (keep in mind that the game was released in 1998 – and a subsequent remake in 2004 – so it’s highly likely Kojima based this on the commonly accepted data sources at the time):
“600,000-700,000 people were evacuated. Over 650,000 children suffered the effects of radiation poisoning. Between 1986 and 1993, 12,000 children died…” – Nastasha Romanenko, Metal Gear Solid
Link: – http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-complexity.html (MichaelCrichton.com: Complexity Theory and Environmental Management – 6/11/2005)
Links
Link: – The New Eugenics in Cinema: Genetic Determinism and Gene Therapy in GATTACA
Link: – World of Longplays – Metal Gear Solid
Link: – GameFAQs: Metal Gear Solid Game Script
Link: – New York Times: The Shootout Over Hidden Meanings in a Video game – 6/22/2008)
Link: – Google Books – Popular Mechanics (May 1994) – Gene Wars
BioShock/Metal Gear Solid PDF article
December 29, 2009 — popularsymbolismWhile learning Lyx/LaTeX, I figured I might as well turn this tutorial session into more practical use by converting all the articles on this site to PDF.
So far, only Bioshock and Metal Gear Solid: Genetic Bondage have been converted to PDF – but I’ll get to the others as well. There’s a Table of Contents, a coverpage and backcover, page numbering, all of the references, a Bibliography section, and an Index section. I’m still debating whether or not I should put these on Lulu.com – it would look great as a printed book – but I’m not sure how Konami (or any other publisher for that matter) would react to it – probably in a negative fashion. In any case, the intent here is not to make money.
BioShock
Download the PDF 'Bioshock: Are you a man or a slave?' here by clicking on this image.
Metal Gear Solid
Download the PDF 'Metal Gear Solid: Genetic Bondage' here by clicking on this image.
I originally intended to have my Metal Gear Solid 2 article out of the door before this year’s end – but that’s looking more and more unlikely. The symbolic gesture here would be to cover this game in the same year it takes place in (the Big Shell mission chapter is set in 2009 – which was a full eight years off when the game was originally released). Instead, I hope to release it in the second week of 2010.
Popular Symbolism- Resident Evil 5 PDF added January 22, 2010
- Legend Of Zelda PDF added. January 3, 2010
- BioShock/Metal Gear Solid PDF article December 29, 2009
- Metal Gear Solid: Genetic Bondage (spoilers) December 1, 2009
- Political indoctrination in games, part II: PeaceMaker and the urge to ’shoot first, ask questions later’ August 11, 2009
