Coup de chaos

This is the hub page for Coup de chaos, a French phrase translatable as either "blow of chaos", "strike from chaos", or "sudden chaos".

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Coup de chaos:


Scratchpad for project:
Characters:

  • Dr. Maria White - L4 engineer, formerly Command-02 Head of Research, now assigned as "apprentice" to Nathan Folger. White is undergoing mandatory two year Joint Duty in a different department, in preparation for being eligible for Site Directorship or higher level positions. Married to Jason White, Foundation Logistics Division.
  • Nathan Folger - Senior Intelligence Field Officer. Wetwork specialist, former student of SCHOOLMASTER.
  • SCHOOLMASTER - Professor Greg Lewis, leading Foundation expert on the Chaos Insurgency.
  • Monica Daniel - Foundation Counterintelligence Officer
  • Troy Muir - Director of Foundation Counterintelligence

As the sun stands still in the southern sky, on the dawn of the cycle of fourteen score, the forces of chaos will cry havoc and let slip the dogs in the home of the brave. With arrows and magic, they will topple the pillars of gold upon which stand the Guardians of Darkness. Without the pillars, the bundle untied, the rods shall all be snapped. Within a moon, the Fellowship that stretches from the Town of the Victorious Hunt to the Constant City will tear itself asunder. The Queen of the Citadels at the Island of the Tribe of the Throwing Axe will vanish in flame. Vengeance will come at the merging of the rivers, and the Javelins and South Way shall perish. Brothers will fight and kill each other, sisters’ children will defile kinship. It is harsh in the world, whoredom rife, an axe age, a sword age, shields are riven, a wind age, a wolf age, before the world goes headlong. No man will have mercy on another. It sates itself on the life-blood of fated men, paints the red powers’ homes with crimson gore. Black become the sun’s beams in the summers that follow, weathers all treacherous. Do you still seek to know? And what? All of this has happened before. The Daughter of the goat with the tail of a fish is the Harbinger of Death. She will lead them all to their end. The Son of the Suns shall be the Savior.


I'm working on a tale in which the Chaos Insurgency decides to go all in, to destroy the GOC, and cripple then replace the Foundation (for reference, this tale is set in the latter half of 2012). I already have a plan for taking the GOC out of play, so I don't need help with that. What I would appreciate is people's ideas for bringing the Foundation down. I have a few assumptions I'm working under:

  • The Chaos Insurgency wishes to supplant the Foundation. Their goal is not a power vacuum, but a situation in which they can operate with the same impunity and support as the Foundation and GOC currently do.
  • The Chaos Insurgency is not evil, or at least no more evil than either the GOC or Foundation. They want to protect and advance humanity and civilization - their goal (or at least, the goal of their leadership, since they're not homogenous) is very similar to that of the Foundation and GOC. The difference is in their methods, specifically their philosophy that it is not only acceptable to use anomalies but short-sighted not to do so. Where the GOC would destroy anything anomalous (regardless of its potential benefits), and the Foundation would put anything anomalous in a locked box and study it only to understand how better to contain it, the Chaos Insurgency would use that which is useful, contain that which is not, and destroy that which is dangerous. To use TVTropes parlance, all three organizations are (for the purposes of this tale) roughly equivalent on the White/Gray/Black morality scale, but differently aligned in the Blue/Orange scale.
  • The Chaos Insurgency is unwilling to destroy human civilization in order to achieve its ends. After all, they want to protect humanity and civilization. That said,
  • Casualties on the order of one billion (or roughly one out of every seven people) are 'acceptable losses'. As the saying goes, in war people die. While they aren't in the business of killing for the sake of killing, the Chaos Insurgency would happily sacrifice the entire combined population of Europe and the United States if it got them what they wanted.
  • The Chaos Insurgency has no desire to break the Veil until it has consolidated its power as the dominant organization responsible for handling anomalies. They're aware they might lose a fight with the GOC and Foundation, and it is easier to survive in the shadows if the world-at-large is unaware of their existence.
  • The Foundation is a robust and redundant organization, but even self-sufficient secure facilities can only operate without support for so long. As the old say goes, amateurs study tactics and strategy, but professionals study logistics. As an analogy, consider ballistic missile submarines: their nuclear reactors are quite capable of running almost indefinitely, and they routinely go to sea for months at a time. During the Cold War, it was intended that each boomer sub might operate for the better part of a year without resupply if war occurred; the corridors would be covered in a foot or more of canned food from wall to wall. Eventually, however, the food and spare parts would run out. In this tale, I'm assuming Foundation facilities are similar. If the entire logistics network for the Foundation went down, it would only be a matter of time (perhaps a year or more, but still a finite period) before sites cannot continue to function.
  • The Foundation is prepared to handle major crises anywhere in the world, but cannot be everywhere at once. It's a numbers game: it would be cost-prohibitive to be everywhere all at once, and doing so would strain the Veil to the breaking point. So, it gambles that a flexible and reactive global presence is sufficient. Most of the time it is, but this leaves the organization vulnerable if problems appear everywhere all at once - a weakness the Chaos Insurgency is exploiting in this tale.
  • Every attack the Chaos Insurgency causes is calculated to have at least two goals. Remember, they are an insurgency. Using age-old asymmetric warfare doctrine, each move they make is calculated in terms of first, second, and sometimes third order effects. Using 9/11 as an example: the physical damage and casualties caused by bring down the Twin Towers were first order effects; the economic damage, increased and invasive security measures enacted under the PATRIOT Act, and the invasion of Afghanistan were all second order effects; the radicalization of the indigenous Islamic populations of the Middle East and South/Central Asia following American invasions and occupations (inciting further attacks on American interests), the economic exhaustion caused by financing Afghanistan (and Iraq) out of deficit spending, and the war weariness of the American people for over a decade of war without obvious goals and with little visible progress were all third order effects. Just like al-Qaida didn't simply fly planes into buildings to kill and scare people, but had a bigger goal in mind, so too would the Chaos Insurgency not simply unleash weaponized SCPs on the world to kill and scare people: they want to force the Foundation to exhaust itself.

So, given those assumptions, I open the floor to suggestions. What tactical moves might the Insurgency take? (I'm mostly interested in things where anomalies play some role in the operations; as a national security scholar in real life, I already have plans for non-anomalous moves.) What weaponized SCPs might they use (these can, but need not, be main-listers)? I have some ideas already, but since this is supposed to be a massive and global assault, I'd like people's thoughts.

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