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SheriBear wrote:With the war against the machines, wouldnt all child bearing women have to bear children about once ever year, even forcing them at gunpoint if needed for humanity to survive? The machines can replace whatever their losses at will, and in fact have several millions (billions?) of ready made bots at their disposal.

I think this would come down largely to the particular ethos of each house. Some I imagine might indeed run a Watership-Down-Efrafa style affair where women are pressed into baby production.

I'd like to think though, that the majority of houses, whilst aware of the need to propagate the human race, would respect women as individuals rather than chattels - to do otherwise would be letting the machine win via the backdoor - sacrificing common human decency for an empty, phyrric victory.

Not wnaitgn to be polemic but what about hmm clonation?
I know I know the engineers fluff about the fact about saving true humankind and so on, but clonation could replenish veyr fast the ranks.
Or even more ahem further.
Bio-spliced artificial womb, that mix donor fertile materials. In al and for all working as super incubation chambers. Sur eis scary, but is not clonation rathers superfast genetically helped natural human birthing. The child so born ar ehuman in all and for all except for their origins.
....
Yes I'm for the mad scientist side. Nature is a wonderful mare to tame

While cloning may appear to be an attractive option in the short run, it'll have nothing but problems farther down the road. Genetic diversity is the biggest one of the bunch, a problem that we're already seeing right now in the Cheetah population.

Genetically speaking, all Cheetahs are cousins to each other or closer. This leads to all sorts of inbreeding problems, not to mention suseptability to diseases and such.

Thats why the second option come in use. Bio-wombs for assisted procreation!

Thanks baron for another phill the alien moment..

Thanks, thanks. Autographed photoes are only 1.99$ each, for another additional dollar you'll get "Splynncryth and Eminem sing Sinatra"

Anyway I was deadly serious about the bio-wombs. gimme some time to develpe the idea and....

I think most humans of breeding age would see it as their duty to their house, and humanity in general, to produce offspring. Just look at real life cultures, both modern and ancient. There have been many that have placed immense pressure on producing offspring to strengthen the societies, and they we not even trying to avoid extinction.

Considering their mastery of gene splicing, I could see a situation where all humans have samples of their DNA kept in bio-computers for mix and match. That way, generations of DNA from across the world could be coupled with new DNA to create babies grown in bio-wombs. Such bio-wombs could be superior to a human with perfect, although unnatural conditions and nutrients.

Copies of your great-great grandfather's DNA could be used to create new life, maybe even leading to a situation where Librarians and Engineers muck about trying to create superhumans. Or rebirths? Maybe instead of cloning, they just use Dreadguard DNA to create the next generation?

Maybe the biotic insanity is tied to "failures" in the genepool project and Dreadguard are the "successes"? Maybe humans who perform badly in life get deleted from the future DNA pool?

You would not want the women pregnant. They are needed to fight alongside everyone else to save the species. I suspect that most children learn how to man a gun turret before they can read. They play FPS games for real.

This logic could lead down a path where no female since the biotech mastery has experienced a "normal" pregnancy...everybody is a test tube baby!

Spinachat cauhgt some of my vision.
Here some of my ideas. The Bio-wombs do exist but are an emergency structure, not used daily, after all Engineers cleared they want to save humakind. Still thye are kept for eemrgency and as backing up. With nanomachines, radiations(not everyoen is living in an host armors and the cybernetic ***** used nucler weapon at first), toxins, alien spores and pollution, well the fertility problems, malformation, genetic disease are quite common for a natural pregnancy(doy ou know that wihtout gynecologist the birth/death ratio would be on death side and mothers woudl not likely to survive the pregnancy? ). So a little help is not out of question. And again is dire world , even more than rifts earth, a pregnant woman for 9 months is not goignto be such useful, I'm sorry to say but dislike what you think when awoman got pregnant if she wanna HOPE for a safe birth for ehr and the child she nee dto stay calm and quite adn follow a diet. ANd they can't run or fight. essentially for 9 months they are waste resource. And in world where any gun can make the difference we cannot be picky . Probably Bio-wombs ar eused to fasten and make safer the birthing process. The fetus is removed from the mother at the third or fourth month, and placed in the bio-womb, that provide an automatic fixing of eventual genetic failures, making sure the child will be born health and strong. The mother can then return to her duty, knowing her child is in the safest hand possible(the bio-wombs close or in the same room as Gene -pools,. the safest place in a great house!). Retro-villages dont' get such luxury and had to deal wiht such problem(sorry if i consider pregnancy a problem) in a primitive and often unhealty way. Try to do a ceasrean Birth with no surgical tool of sort nor anesthetic or else. ANd wha tif the kid is born without a leg, or wiht breathign problems or wiht an heart smaller than normal?.

the bio-wombs you are proposeing sound like the tlelaxu (sp) xlotl tanks from the dune series of books. not that its a bad thing to make the comparision but thats what i see.

Spinachcat wrote:Considering their mastery of gene splicing, I could see a situation where all humans have samples of their DNA kept in bio-computers for mix and match. That way, generations of DNA from across the world could be coupled with new DNA to create babies grown in bio-wombs. Such bio-wombs could be superior to a human with perfect, although unnatural conditions and nutrients.

Copies of your great-great grandfather's DNA could be used to create new life, maybe even leading to a situation where Librarians and Engineers muck about trying to create superhumans. Or rebirths? Maybe instead of cloning, they just use Dreadguard DNA to create the next generation?

Maybe the biotic insanity is tied to "failures" in the genepool project and Dreadguard are the "successes"? Maybe humans who perform badly in life get deleted from the future DNA pool?

You would not want the women pregnant. They are needed to fight alongside everyone else to save the species. I suspect that most children learn how to man a gun turret before they can read. They play FPS games for real.

This logic could lead down a path where no female since the biotech mastery has experienced a "normal" pregnancy...everybody is a test tube baby!

However, that would go against the main tenants of the Resistance, where they will not alter or augment the human body in any way. That would only do the Machine's work for it, by removing the very idea of "humanity" from the planet.

In that end, I think the Resistance would only allow for natural methods of reproduction and believe that doing anything other than that would be just helping the Machine along.

Yes but IF YOU READ MY LAST POST, you see I said the Bio-womb could be helpful to quicken the birthing process and make it safer. And in this way we could have some female splicer goign around. I'm not too fond of an idea of women being just walking human factories. Personal feelings.

Lt. Holmes wrote:However, that would go against the main tenants of the Resistance, where they will not alter or augment the human body in any way. That would only do the Machine's work for it, by removing the very idea of "humanity" from the planet.

In that end, I think the Resistance would only allow for natural methods of reproduction and believe that doing anything other than that would be just helping the Machine along.

Keep in mind that children born in the US and Europe, especially in the middle and upper class, do not have "traditional pregnancies" as humans did a century ago. Today, mommies have special vitamins, exercise programs, and a host of pharmaceutical care from doctors that did not exist before. Add fertility drugs and pre-natal surgery and the 21st century births looks quite different than the 19th century.

One could assume that "natural" in the Splicers world might be much more advanced than our own...or not depending on the GMs interpretation of the Resistance.

The Baron of chaos wrote:Yes but IF YOU READ MY LAST POST, you see I said the Bio-womb could be helpful to quicken the birthing process and make it safer. And in this way we could have some female splicer goign around. I'm not too fond of an idea of women being just walking human factories. Personal feelings.

You missed my point entirely. I have no doubts that the Resistance is pretty well gender-neutral when it comes to getting the job done; they don't have so many people that they can afford to be picky or choosy. All I was trying to say is that if a pregnacy happens, I believe that it would happen in the natural way with very little if any bio-tech interference.

Spinachcat wrote:Keep in mind that children born in the US and Europe, especially in the middle and upper class, do not have "traditional pregnancies" as humans did a century ago. Today, mommies have special vitamins, exercise programs, and a host of pharmaceutical care from doctors that did not exist before. Add fertility drugs and pre-natal surgery and the 21st century births looks quite different than the 19th century.

You raise a good point. I'm sure that Saints would be around to do their jobs and be the doctors to observe and assist where needed, but I'm still against the idea of any extreme biotechnogical intervention.

Spinachcat wrote:One could assume that "natural" in the Splicers world might be much more advanced than our own...or not depending on the GMs interpretation of the Resistance.

An even better point; there has been nothing said on this topic in any Splicers material. Besides, this whole thread is all about personal interpretation and how responders feel about it.

They can't, that's an integral part of the setting though. Humans aren't ever supposed to beat the machine thru military strength. Even if the Houses could somehow field an army large enough to threaten even the smallest of the industrial centers, Hecate would simply activate the orbital weapons satellites and nuke the army into oblivion.