Mamore Dead Zones

The Mamore Dead Zones (Operation: QUICKSAND FLY) refer to a comprehensive and growing phenomenon on the human of beginning in the . Multiple regions of increased desertification displayed multispectral jamming of communication and sensory equipment across great distances and high into the surrounding atmosphere that the majority of electronic infrastructure and sophisticated industrial activity cannot proceed, including aerospace travel and satellite communications.
Common understanding of the so-called "dead zones" attribute the severity of counterinsurgency and tactical weapons of mass destruction by both government and rebel forces as cause for the interference. However, much conspiracy and skepticism continued during and after the towards a deliberate / origin. Behind closed doors, the dead zones are a result of Operation: QUICKSAND FLY, an and joint project to spread and intermix self-replicating chaff material into the topsoil around on Mamore using strategic bomber forces, referred offhand in internal documents as "radio gray goo."
In application, ONI's nanomachine chaff displayed early success in decreasing morale of targeted civilian populations supporting the Mamore rebellion by interrupting everyday life and even the most basic socioeconomic activities. Especially sophisticated dual-use industries like aerospace and rocketry were impossible without reliance of automation and advanced sensors. It effectively made it impossible for the residents of targeted regions to leave the planet or develop weapons to fight UNSC security forces, freeing resources to fight the "greater" alien threat. The encrypted dead man's switch for demilitarizing by degradation and self-destruction of nanomachine fields remains a closely guarded secret by ONI and has never been deployed. The only means of electronic infrastructure and communications in the dead zones are hardened and shielded, including thickened fiber-optic cabling or line-of-sight arrays.
QUICKSAND FLY resulted in mass migrations out of targeted zones over the next decade as side-effects of the nanomachines caused desertification and severe crop failure. Inhalation of nanomachines could cause obstruction or damage to the lungs and lung cancer in simulated, long-term studies by military AI. Despite the adverse conditions, natural phenomenon such as freeze, heat, rain and wind, within allowed margin, reduced some of the potential harm to organic life in the depopulated spaces and resumed as minor/haphazard strongholds of as UNSC security forces avoid patrolling dead zones after the war, a continuation of common "Pale Zone" observances to contain/quarantine antagonistic populations too difficult to control.
Category:Insurrection
Category:Office of Naval Intelligence