Tannheuser Technoplague
The Tannheuser Technoplague is a type of technoplague which originated in the Tannheuser system and underwent a brief period of spread from there after the system was recontacted. Fixes and cures have since been developed to remove the plague from affected computers and areas.
The plague and its several strains are not very remarkable when compared to others, like most technoplagues they infect computing devices and connected systems (including poorly-secured personal implants) in order to subvert, disable, destroy, or otherwise suborn them to their own purposes. Most strains of Tannheuser plague are replicator variants, duplicating themselves to fill all available storage space while attempting to find ways to transmit themselves on to infect other hosts. Its most notable feature as a whole is its age—the plague dates all the way back to the wars at the end of the Second Interstellar Period, before the onset of the Interstellar Dark Ages. The Tannheuser system was isolated during this time, after its stargates failed or were destroyed in attacks, and was only recently recontacted within the last twenty metric years. While civilization in the system did undergo heavy technological regression, it did not lose computer technology and hence the plague still had ample places to spread (both to systems currently in use and ones located in derelict ruins such as space stations which were still at least partially active) and undergo synthetic evolution.
The Tannheuser inhabitants got around these nasty Age of Strife leftovers to some extent by making their computer technology so primitive the technoplague could not do much against it, and since they lost industries such as nanotech, cybernetic implants, and advanced robotics there was also little which the plague could to directly affect the physical world.
Recontact of Tannheuser system brought the plague to the attention of wider Starweb space; it stowed away on ships returning from Tannheuser and caused outbreaks in various other locations, mostly nearby, though these were easily dealt with since more advanced types of technoplague had already been fought and defeated during the re-establishment of interstellar civilization. The Accession Wars in the Tannheuser system delayed research and deployment of fixes capable of purging it from computers there, but by the present day it is considered well and truly defeated.
The plague and its several strains are not very remarkable when compared to others, like most technoplagues they infect computing devices and connected systems (including poorly-secured personal implants) in order to subvert, disable, destroy, or otherwise suborn them to their own purposes. Most strains of Tannheuser plague are replicator variants, duplicating themselves to fill all available storage space while attempting to find ways to transmit themselves on to infect other hosts. Its most notable feature as a whole is its age—the plague dates all the way back to the wars at the end of the Second Interstellar Period, before the onset of the Interstellar Dark Ages. The Tannheuser system was isolated during this time, after its stargates failed or were destroyed in attacks, and was only recently recontacted within the last twenty metric years. While civilization in the system did undergo heavy technological regression, it did not lose computer technology and hence the plague still had ample places to spread (both to systems currently in use and ones located in derelict ruins such as space stations which were still at least partially active) and undergo synthetic evolution.
The Tannheuser inhabitants got around these nasty Age of Strife leftovers to some extent by making their computer technology so primitive the technoplague could not do much against it, and since they lost industries such as nanotech, cybernetic implants, and advanced robotics there was also little which the plague could to directly affect the physical world.
Recontact of Tannheuser system brought the plague to the attention of wider Starweb space; it stowed away on ships returning from Tannheuser and caused outbreaks in various other locations, mostly nearby, though these were easily dealt with since more advanced types of technoplague had already been fought and defeated during the re-establishment of interstellar civilization. The Accession Wars in the Tannheuser system delayed research and deployment of fixes capable of purging it from computers there, but by the present day it is considered well and truly defeated.
Origin
Engineered
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