by Max Barry

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«12. . .1,8321,8331,8341,8351,8361,8371,838. . .2,6342,635»

*blushes*

Thank you all for your kind words. I've entered many flag competitions, but this was the first one that I've won...

...I can't tell if you all have better taste, here, or worse :P

I am just here to say I can't believe it is August already. 0.o

P.S. I also basically forgot the 5th anniversary of our nation's foundation on July 30.

Oh well... Happy belated anniversary, I guess. If anyone cares to come to The Bar on the corner of every region with me, I'll buy you a beer.

Dear Friends, a few things:

Happy Crystal Jubilee, Forest! It's amazing to think that our region has existed for 15 years. That's so old in computer terms, it might as well be a century ago. Our Quindecennial Anniversary, you might say!

Congratulations to Verdant Haven for his work in putting things together for the Jubilee! It's an auspicious time to be holding the reins. Also, congratulations to Northern Wood for their commemorative flag design, and Middle Barael for having made it to the run-off! Also also, congratulations to Frieden-und Freudenland for their commendation! It is very well-deserved and well-earned!

Also, if I may, I'd like to mention that Ruinenlust was founded on August 4th, 2016, so today is our own Quadrennial Anniversary, and also the beginning of our fifth year of existence. I moved into Forest within a few hours of the nation being founded, so this is also the beginning of my fifth year in our wonderful region! For me, NS and Forest are one and the same, and while I've explored other regions with puppets, they have all come and gone, and the Forest endures.

---

In another, but related, vein, I'd just like to say something about the general state of things, because I feel like it bubbles just beneath the surface for many of us.

On one hand, it's very easy to fall into anxiety, despair, anger, and fear over any number of the things that are going on in society and in the world. If you are from a number of different countries, you're also dealing with problems related to that country's specific situation (i.e. it sucks to be in America, Brazil, China, Turkey, Lebanon, etc. etc. right now). The trifecta of the pandemic, the economic fallout, and "the idiots at the top" can be very damaging, and there has been and will be a tremendous amount of suffering on account of all of these things.

On the other hand, we know that none of these problems really compare at all with the medium- and long-term effects of climate change, rising sea levels, ecocide, ever-increasing demand, and rising numbers and severity of "natural" disasters. In broad strokes, looking on the scale of centuries, we may very well have set in motion things that will render the planet largely uninhabitable, and that would make a complex, technological, globalized civilization impossible. Without going into all of that (since many of you know what I would say again and at great length, haha), we can leave it there.

On a third, mutant hand, we also know that the late 20th and completed portion of the 21st century has been the very best time to be alive as an average person. The 20th century started with horse-drawn carriages, telegraph, and no knowledge of other galaxies, and it ended with extraordinary advances that led to Moon landings, jets, the internet, the Standard Model of physics, the Hubble telescope, extraordinary advances in medicine, and the emergence of new substances and synthesized chemicals, such as plastics, that have been akin to wonder-materials. We shifted from a society whose constraint was how much food it could grow (i.e. the same old story since the emergence of agriculture thousands of years ago) to how much it could consume. Now, while most of these things could also have been put into the previous paragraph of inherently unsustainable things that are rapidly destroying the planet, there is absolutely no denying that the lives of individuals, at least in the First World, have been so incredibly enriched and advanced compared with the lives of emperors, popes, and monarchs from merely the 19th century.

---

So take comfort in that. For some reason, whether by design of Someone or by sheer chance of the universe, you exist now, at this brief nexus of humanity, where the story fundamentally changes. Everything that has ever come before will be different and will be affected by this "quantum leap" in our civilization. Nothing will come out of the other side in the way that it was. Look at the physical objects around you, outside the window, and around the world from the comfort of your computer, and marvel at how utterly strange and different things are than how they would ever have been since the emergence of our species.

We are here, at the time when everything is heating up, burning, getting bulldozed and reconstructed. We are here as humanity measures changes in mere months and years, not in centuries and millennia. We are here in this brief fireworks show and explosive chain reaction, living sparks and booms that are filling the air with toxic waste. We are the radiant fire that burns everything down, but also that lights everything up in the brief interlude.

There's no sugar-coating the dire state of things, but just know that The Crisis isn't the pandemic, or the economy, or the failing democracies. The Crisis is the long detour from reality that we embarked on in the 19th century with industrialization, and which has grown and morphed like a cancer to encompass the whole world. We are, perhaps, living in the century of "Peak Humanity," after which there will be a multi-century decline such that would make the Late Bronze Age collapse look like spilling a flowerpot on the floor, but that is entirely out of our control. I'm also not trying to take away from the real, actual suffering involved with the pandemic, the economy, and the idiot leaders who have greatly exacerbated these crises and who feed on ripping their societies apart for their own gain. That's all real, but it's noise in the larger rise and fall of humanity that we are in the middle of and that extends nearly two centuries back and perhaps two or more centuries forward.

---

Also, personally speaking, I have been dealing with my private apocalyptic thoughts regarding the environment for years now. The vulture-like specter of impending destruction, disaster, and hard times is something that I've wrestled with for years now, and with every year, the evidence all mounts in the direction that I'm not an alarmist or crazy, but that I can get a fragmentary glimpse of what's really going on in the longer term. As I said to my grandparents the other day, I prefer thinking about climate change to the pandemic, because you can kind of "shut off" thinking about climate change and have a normal American day.

But what do you do? For me, I try to learn as much as possible, and to also try to devote myself to things in my daily life that sustain me, such as exercising, gardening, teaching (on Zoom, lol), and keeping in touch (electronically) with my few friends and family. I try not to think about my "future" too much, and I also try not to think about my past. I'm just here, now. And if it were to all end; if I were to get killed by a runaway truck on the highway, it was a good life. Piddling around like this has been much richer and more rewarding than being a medieval peasant would have been, or that being a prehistoric hunter-gatherer would have been. I wouldn't know you guys, and I wouldn't have a laptop, and I wouldn't be able to spend most of my life just sort of faffing around, watching the world burn, and wondering what it's all for.

And what comforts me is that, in the end, the Earth will heal. Humanity will be long gone, and our impact will be a geologic layer of sediment and rock that the tectonic plates will gradually churn into the mantle, and life will evolve on, perhaps for billions of years, on this little marble floating around a lightbulb in the void. And there are perhaps two-trillion galaxies in the observable universe, with hundreds of billions of stars, and planets, and it's all been going for 13.5 billion years, and will eventually end in heat death or something else that I won't live long enough to see or care about. And who knows what's out there?

So it's all very terrible, but it's also very wonderful and amazing. And once you put the problems into perspective, and should you be lucky enough to not have acute, pressing problems in the humdrum of life, it's an amazing thing, to be alive here and now. It's sad and tragic and unfortunate, but it's also amazing and incredible and so fulfilling and enriching. And I'm not trying to export this to anyone else, it's just how I personally cope with things and think of them.

So be content. We're the rock stars. We get to scream and smash things and do coke, and no, it won't last, and it will leave a mess afterward, but that's the way things are. So feel the beat and watch the weather. It really is the best and the worst of times, right now, as Dickens said.

We are here. We exist.

This has been a public service announcement from the Office of Pseudo-spiration of Ruinenlust.

Ruinenlust wrote:snip

Why does it suck to be in China?

Atsvea wrote:Why does it suck to be in China?

In a stream-of-consciousness way, since I have to do stuff IRL in a minute:

Rule by the communist party; lack of democracy; terrible environmental regulations; Hong Kong is dying; rapidly aging population without having first quite acquired First World wealth to fund such a transition; far too many cities that are far too populous; encroaching Gobi Desert; melting Tibetan glaciers; social and political oppression of Tibetans, Uighurs, and many other minority groups; dictatorial leadership of Xi that is likely for life; lack of open information due to censorship; rapid overdevelopment of the landscape with massive infrastructure projects that have destroyed much of the environment; perennial massive floods along major rivers despite all of the awful dams; rare Earth metal extraction that is terribly polluting; crazy levels of surveillance; etc.

At least so I've heard. I've never been there, actually, and I don't intend on going, either. I'll stay in North America, lol. :-)

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:I am just here to say I can't believe it is August already. 0.o

I can't either. Time... time is weird.

>2 hours ago Uan aa boa ceased to exist
:C RIP to a real one.

Also, congrats Frieden-und Freudenland!!! Much deserved!

My gosh... that explosion in Beirut was brutal...

Sacara wrote:My gosh... that explosion in Beirut was brutal...

Yes. With the economic crisis in the country and constant protests and riots against the corrupt and inept government, it is really hitting hard there. No doubt Hezbollah is behind the attacks, since in just a few days the verdict of a UN trial on four Hezbollah members will be released, not to mention how Hezbollah attacked northern Israel just a few weeks ago.

Sacara wrote:My gosh... that explosion in Beirut was brutal...

Yeah, just saw some videos of that. Crazy stuff. No cause stated yet, but a death toll of 25 and 2,500 injured minimum. At this point, I'm just hoping it was an innocent accident that set it off, because we really don't want, or need, terrorist attacks or wars breaking out.

On a much lighter tone, yesterday I found out that jalapeno peppers are actually not that expensive. You can get a kilogram of them for less than $9.00 Canadian. And you can do so much with a kilogram of jalapeno peppers. So my recommendation is to support your local economy by buying freshly grown jalapeno peppers, because they're far too cheap to justify not having a lot of them.

Canaltia wrote:Yeah, just saw some videos of that. Crazy stuff. No cause stated yet, but a death toll of 25 and 2,500 injured minimum. At this point, I'm just hoping it was an innocent accident that set it off, because we really don't want, or need, terrorist attacks or wars breaking out.

On a much lighter tone, yesterday I found out that jalapeno peppers are actually not that expensive. You can get a kilogram of them for less than $9.00 Canadian. And you can do so much with a kilogram of jalapeno peppers. So my recommendation is to support your local economy by buying freshly grown jalapeno peppers, because they're far too cheap to justify not having a lot of them.

As if 2020 could get any worse.

Middle Barael wrote:...No doubt Hezbollah is behind the attacks, since in just a few days the verdict of a UN trial on four Hezbollah members will be released, not to mention how Hezbollah attacked northern Israel just a few weeks ago.

From what I'm reading, it was likely gross negligence. Two reports say either ammonium nitrate or sodium nitrate was left in the port for over a year after being confiscated, and that a fire caused it to explode. Even if it was an accident though, it doesn't lessen the devastation and human loss.

Effazio wrote:From what I'm reading, it was likely gross negligence. Two reports say either ammonium nitrate or sodium nitrate was left in the port for over a year after being confiscated, and that a fire caused it to explode. Even if it was an accident though, it doesn't lessen the devastation and human loss.

Yeah, I've been seeing the same thing. Now it seems really anyone is behind it, or that it was intentional. Hezbollah, Iran, and Israel have all denied involvement, and Israel and Iran have both offered humanitarian aid.

Effazio wrote:From what I'm reading, it was likely gross negligence. Two reports say either ammonium nitrate or sodium nitrate was left in the port for over a year after being confiscated, and that a fire caused it to explode. Even if it was an accident though, it doesn't lessen the devastation and human loss.

That's what it's looking like currently, from the news. If it was an NH4NO3 blast triggered by a fire, that brings to mind the devastation of the Texas City blasts in 1947. If what President Aoun mentioned as a possibility proves true - that a warehouse containing 2,750 tonnes (3031 tons) of NH4NO3 is what blew up, we sadly need to be ready for the death toll to climb even higher than the 70 it's at right now. An industrial accident is in some ways "better" than a deliberate terrorist act, from a geopolitical stability perspective, but for the victims and their families the devastation and suffering are the same. In this disaster, let's hope that everybody can put aside their differences for a bit and help those who were affected to recover, to mourn, and to rebuild.

Verdant Haven wrote:That's what it's looking like currently, from the news. If it was an NH4NO3 blast triggered by a fire, that brings to mind the devastation of the Texas City blasts in 1947. If what President Aoun mentioned as a possibility proves true - that a warehouse containing 2,750 tonnes (3031 tons) of NH4NO3 is what blew up, we sadly need to be ready for the death toll to climb even higher than the 70 it's at right now. An industrial accident is in some ways "better" than a deliberate terrorist act, from a geopolitical stability perspective, but for the victims and their families the devastation and suffering are the same. In this disaster, let's hope that everybody can put aside their differences for a bit and help those who were affected to recover, to mourn, and to rebuild.

Yes, I am heartbroken. It was such a devastating explosion.

Even holidaymakers in Cyprus heard the blast (around 190 km away, according to my Google Earth ruler measurement 0.o) and seismographs recorded it as an earthquake of magnitude 3.3. Let that sink in. I cannot imagine the impact that the explosion had in Beirut. I just hope it wasn't some terrorist organization that executed a planned attack like this. Not that it would change the death toll, but as you said, I don't wanna think about its political implications.

I have been looking around on Google Earth, trying to match the port area (as seen in October 2019) to the rubble we see today. It is so sad. It seems the ammonium nitrate was in what is called Beirut Port Silos, and that is the white building that exploded :(

https://earth.google.com/web/@33.90132511,35.51842498,1.64204304a,1626.57369948d,15y,-8.55813285h,8.45150525t,0r

Ruinenlust wrote:In a stream-of-consciousness way, since I have to do stuff IRL in a minute:

Rule by the communist party; lack of democracy; terrible environmental regulations; Hong Kong is dying; rapidly aging population without having first quite acquired First World wealth to fund such a transition; far too many cities that are far too populous; encroaching Gobi Desert; melting Tibetan glaciers; social and political oppression of Tibetans, Uighurs, and many other minority groups; dictatorial leadership of Xi that is likely for life; lack of open information due to censorship; rapid overdevelopment of the landscape with massive infrastructure projects that have destroyed much of the environment; perennial massive floods along major rivers despite all of the awful dams; rare Earth metal extraction that is terribly polluting; crazy levels of surveillance; etc.

At least so I've heard. I've never been there, actually, and I don't intend on going, either. I'll stay in North America, lol. :-)

China's actually been pretty good, environmentally speaking, in recent years. However the nature of non-accountable government is that while they can instigate environmental measures on a whim they can also wreck the environment on a whim. In the long term, its not the most sustainable system for environmentalism.

I'd agree though that lack of government transparency is a problem. In fact, it's also the thing which hides all the problems we don't know about, and it'd be naive to think that the horrifying human rights abuses and corrupt actions of the powerful are anything more than the tip of a huge and hidden iceberg of state malfeasance.

For its wrongdoings, it is accountability in the USA that allows the government to have made progress. While Western democracies have got a long way to go, they've also come a long way, and that's because of accountability.

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:Yes, I am heartbroken. It was such a devastating explosion.

I have been looking around on Google Earth, trying to match the port area (as seen in October 2019) to the rubble we see today. It is so sad. It seems the ammonium nitrate was in what is called Beirut Port Silos, and that is the white building that exploded :(

https://earth.google.com/web/@33.90132511,35.51842498,1.64204304a,1626.57369948d,15y,-8.55813285h,8.45150525t,0r

That definitely is the building :-/ The BBC article has a clip with a couple of videos of the explosion (since the building was on fire first, people were filming from multiple perspectives at long distance). It looks like the detonation occurred initially in the 7th and 8th columns of the silo, with the building acting to provide the containment that makes turns an ammonium nitrate fire into an explosive. The explosion blew out the top, followed a split second later by the north end, and a split second after that, the sound end. We can only hope that since the initial direction of the blast was to the north (towards the water), that more of the effects were directed harmlessly out to see. Had it been the other way around, I'm guessing it would even worse.

To provide a more recent connection than the 1947 Texas City explosions... for those who remember the Oklahoma City bombing, that blast was the equivalent of around 5000lbs of TNT. If the quantity given by President Aoun is correct, and it all detonated, this one was the equivalent of 2,546,040lbs of TNT, or 1.27 kilotons - more than 500 times larger, and on the scale of some tactical nuclear weapons that are still in service to this day.

The videos are really horridly visceral. They're in the distance, you don't see any injuries or anything like that, but the raw power behind it is bigger than even the detonations of refineries that are perhaps the closest non-military equivalent I've seen.

-edit-
I've now seen a couple of much closer perspectives. Some of the buildings in the surrounding neighborhood practically disintegrated. I'm done for the evening. Oi :-/

I finally finished putting together my August environmental agenda. It is here:

The Problem:

Link

Forty million tons of electronic waste (electronics/electronic accessories that are thrown away) is generated every year and only about twelve and a half percent of it is recycled. It is often full of toxic materials (examples include lead, mercury, dioxins, and cadmium). Much of it ends up in poor regions of Asia and Africa where these toxins inevitably leach into water supplies, killing aquatic life as well as severely impacting the health of land animals (including humans). Additionally, plastics involved are photodegraded into microplastics which proliferate globally at an alarming rate. (Microplastics severely impact animal health. No animal life has evolved any mechanisms to combat them.) Some simple steps can be taken to minimize your E-waste footprint:

Solutions:

1. (Reduce) Do not purchase new electronic devices unless the justification for doing so outweighs the environmental degradation that the e-waste from it will create (Of course, this is ultimately a personal judgement. However, it is easy enough to find the facts that you need to inform it).

2. (Reuse) If you find yourself with unneeded electronic hardware, try to reuse it (I have a single cable that I use to charge my shaver and water flosser.). If you cannot reuse it with other technology that you own, consider using it for other purposes. For example, I am using a broken wireless phone charging stand as a camera mount. If you cannot do any of these things, please consider selling/trading in or donating these items.

3) (Recycle) There is some E-waste that cannot be reused for one reason or another (when a cable is cut, no amount of handiness is going to restore it into a functional and safe one. Such items can be recycled easily enough. In the US, every Best Buy location accepts E-waste for recycling (I will include a link with details in my references). If you are handy and have the necessary equipment, you can recover some metals on your own.

4) (Responsible disposal. That’s right, I added a fourth R!) Unfortunately, some items like damaged batteries cannot be addressed with Rs number two and three. These should be taken to local hazardous waste collection.

Link

Please remember that electronic waste is not just a problem impacting the environment. It is also a problem impacting human rights/health!

References:

LinkBest Buy recycling information

Link E-Waste Facts (There are some alarming counters on this page if you want to cultivate a feeling of urgency!)

Read dispatch

Mozworld, I would appreciate it if you would pin it! Ambassadors, please disseminate it. Thank you!

This explosion in Beirut was unbelievably large. It's amazing that that amount of material was stored in the middle of a populated area. Those substances ought to only be stored in secure locations, far away from fragile infrastructure and people, and never in those quantities that would detonate to that extent.

-----

Also, new from America: a truly bonkers 37 minute interview between AXIOS media and Donald Trump. This is like a parody of what a government would be. This could have been an involved, in-depth skit in a comedy production from one or two decades ago. It's unreal that this is what is actually going on. It gets hysterically funny (and tragic, but you have to laugh otherwise you'll cry) around 14:00, when he produces these charts and papers. It's just...oh dear. O__O

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaaTZkqsaxY

Turbeaux wrote:I finally finished putting together my August environmental agenda. It is here:
The Problem:

Link

Forty million tons of electronic waste (electronics/electronic accessories that are thrown away) is generated every year and only about twelve and a half percent of it is recycled. It is often full of toxic materials (examples include lead, mercury, dioxins, and cadmium). Much of it ends up in poor regions of Asia and Africa where these toxins inevitably leach into water supplies, killing aquatic life as well as severely impacting the health of land animals (including humans). Additionally, plastics involved are photodegraded into microplastics which proliferate globally at an alarming rate. (Microplastics severely impact animal health. No animal life has evolved any mechanisms to combat them.) Some simple steps can be taken to minimize your E-waste footprint:

Solutions:

1. (Reduce) Do not purchase new electronic devices unless the justification for doing so outweighs the environmental degradation that the e-waste from it will create (Of course, this is ultimately a personal judgement. However, it is easy enough to find the facts that you need to inform it).

2. (Reuse) If you find yourself with unneeded electronic hardware, try to reuse it (I have a single cable that I use to charge my shaver and water flosser.). If you cannot reuse it with other technology that you own, consider using it for other purposes. For example, I am using a broken wireless phone charging stand as a camera mount. If you cannot do any of these things, please consider selling/trading in or donating these items.

3) (Recycle) There is some E-waste that cannot be reused for one reason or another (when a cable is cut, no amount of handiness is going to restore it into a functional and safe one. Such items can be recycled easily enough. In the US, every Best Buy location accepts E-waste for recycling (I will include a link with details in my references). If you are handy and have the necessary equipment, you can recover some metals on your own.

4) (Responsible disposal. That’s right, I added a fourth R!) Unfortunately, some items like damaged batteries cannot be addressed with Rs number two and three. These should be taken to local hazardous waste collection.

Link

Please remember that electronic waste is not just a problem impacting the environment. It is also a problem impacting human rights/health!

References:

LinkBest Buy recycling information

Link E-Waste Facts (There are some alarming counters on this page if you want to cultivate a feeling of urgency!)

Read dispatch

Mozworld, I would appreciate it if you would pin it! Ambassadors, please disseminate it. Thank you!

I have sent it to the CK RMB, hope it helps.

Ruinenlust wrote:This explosion in Beirut was unbelievably large. It's amazing that that amount of material was stored in the middle of a populated area. Those substances ought to only be stored in secure locations, far away from fragile infrastructure and people, and never in those quantities that would detonate to that extent.

-----

Also, new from America: a truly bonkers 37 minute interview between AXIOS media and Donald Trump. This is like a parody of what a government would be. This could have been an involved, in-depth skit in a comedy production from one or two decades ago. It's unreal that this is what is actually going on. It gets hysterically funny (and tragic, but you have to laugh otherwise you'll cry) around 14:00, when he produces these charts and papers. It's just...oh dear. O__O

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaaTZkqsaxY

This proves that Trump's president-program basically comes down to pointing fingers (Democrat cities supposedly encouraging protests as well as governors doing poorly addressing COVID), citing ratings (blah blah blah "highest-ratings in the history of Saturday evening Fox News") ,and using anecdotal references (The part where he mentioned a friend who had received a "ballot" for a dead son as well as people receiving ballots for dogs). I half-expected a copy of the cognitive test where he successfully identified drawings of animals to be in that stack of COVID graphs!

Socialist Platypus wrote:I have sent it to the CK RMB, hope it helps.

Thank you!

EDIT: Ruinenlust, I would like to formally call for opening an embassy with the New West Indies as it is effectively Conifer's succesor region (I hope that some previous residents of Conifer will second my endorsement). Funky Goats (who has been associated with Conifer since the early days of its first iteration is a member of government and has collected some statements of support from some other tall trees here: https://imgur.com/a/xCMvDYw . I already have a puppet there and would gladly assume ambassadorial duties (unless a previous resident of Conifer would like to fill that position). I believe that we should initiate the process because they already did that a while ago and it did not make it up for a vote. Evergreen Conifer is dead and its previous government supports Forest closing our embassy with it as well as opening one with the New West Indies. (I know that those are two separate votes but it would maintain stability in our number of embassies.)

My personal impressions of the New West Indies are that it is a stable region with a stable democratic government that enjoys cerebral RP (it reminds me a little bit of Wintreath, which is a good thing). There is no explicit emphasis on the environment aside from its absorption of Conifer (which was peaceful and received full support from Evergreen Conifer's government). However, it is definitely an egalitarian region!

Turbeaux wrote:My personal impressions of the New West Indies are that it is a stable region with a stable democratic government that enjoys cerebral RP (it reminds me a little bit of Wintreath, which is a good thing). There is no explicit emphasis on the environment aside from its absorption of Conifer (which was peaceful and received full support from Evergreen Conifer's government). However, it is definitely an egalitarian region!

To add one bit to this: I recently reached out to NWI about plans for the upcoming N-Day, specifically because of their history with Conifer, and they are interested in/planning to join us in our Canopy faction. So I absolutely agree it would make sense to open embassies.

Mount Seymour wrote:To add one bit to this: I recently reached out to NWI about plans for the upcoming N-Day, specifically because of their history with Conifer, and they are interested in/planning to join us in our Canopy faction. So I absolutely agree it would make sense to open embassies.

When does N-Day happen? The last Z-Day happened right after I created my nation and I thought it was kinda lame, and I expected N-Day to be further than it apparently is from Z-Day to spread the events more evenly across the year.

I hope that N-Day is better than Z-Day was. I had like 12 million in population so taking any action had little effect on literally every nation and I was zombified and then exterminated early on.

Lura wrote:When does N-Day happen? The last Z-Day happened right after I created my nation and I thought it was kinda lame, and I expected N-Day to be further than it apparently is from Z-Day to spread the events more evenly across the year.

I hope that N-Day is better than Z-Day was. I had like 12 million in population so taking any action had little effect on literally every nation and I was zombified and then exterminated early on.

N-Day is likely to be September 26, like it was last year. Originally it was an April Fools event, then it moved to the end of August in "celebration" of the International Day against Nuclear Tests on the 29th. Now it's on the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

Once the novelty of Z-Day wore off after my first time experiencing it, I never found it terribly interesting. It's very deterministic. In regions like Forest, the whole region is almost certain to cure itself within the first 12 hours. But if you don't have that, you're almost certain to end up with a rising death number that's virtually unstoppable. By the last 6-12 hours of Z-Day, really very little is happening.

In contrast, I've always found N-Day one of the most exciting events of the year. While Z-Day is primarily driven by the hard-coded march of infection, things only happen in N-Day when people make them happen. Plus, it's all about interactions between factions. The result is that (1) there's a lot of real politicking of the kind that just doesn't occur in day-to-day NationStates (alliances and pacts hastily being formed, suspicions of double-crossing, trying to construct a public image so that no one will go after your faction), and (2) things are happening all the time. When we did N-Day last year, we had at least five people online protecting the faction, coordinating against rogues, and choosing targets at all hours of the day.

Where success in Z-Day is determined by game-given stats (your population, natural infection) and has a single obvious "correct" choice, success in N-Day is determined by players' actions (how many nations you can work with at once, if you can notice incoming weapons in time, if some other players decide to target you, if you make the right strategic decisions about nukes versus shields) and can encompass many different strategies.

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