Re: [HOE] Re: was Doomsayers - now Harrowed

[Allan Seyberth <darious@darious.com>]

 >Which brings up a point - how did the Powers That Be, the Agency, Texas
 >Rangers etc, explain away the Harrowed to the general public? "There's
 >nothing to see here, no such thing as the supernatural. And dead folk
 >sometimes get back up again. . ." Doesn't quite ring true, does it? Even if
 >they managed to make it something that people didn't discuss generally, the
 >major religions would be forced to have a view on the fact that death is not
 >as permanent as it once seemed.
 >
 >Anyone have any ideas how something like this could be swept under the
 >carpet for 200 years?

They didn't have to explain - they were effective in covering it up.  At 
least until the Plunkett tape and the DPLF kidnapping brought everything to 
the front page.  At which point the harrowed thing was spin-doctored as 
part of the process for becoming a cyborg - "irreversable chemical changes" 
and all that.

As for the whole harrowed thing - I imagine it as similar to our 
aliens/Roswell situation.  Everyone knows about them, but nobody has any 
real "proof".  Oh sure - individuals here and there have seen their 
relatives come back from the dead - but then the relative disappears and 
the witness is diagnosed with "Survivors Guilt" or some well-documented 
psych phenomenon where those who have witnessed a death, or survived the 
death of a close friend or relative tend to have hallucinations/day dreams 
about their return. . . A phenomenon which has evidently been going on 
since ancient history. If you look at the number of undead superstitions 
across the world, this would seem to be indicative that there is something 
in the human psyche that refuses to let go of the recently departed. . .

This psychological phenomenon is only reinforced by the body movements that 
the process of death sometimes takes - the fact that hair and fingernails 
still grow after death, the process of rigor mortis making a body jerk 
upright, and the rare case of post-death motivation due to muscular and 
nervous system memory (as documented by Dr. Black of the Johns Hopkins 
institute) where the deceased continue to perform actions like "writing" or 
"walking" because of the chemical processes of death firing off 
simulataneously  ....

blah blah blah. . .

:-)



-------------------
Allan Seyberth
darious@darious.com
Deadlands fan site - http://www.darious.com/

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