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Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Smells Like... Treason 

This is a great one from BoingBoing. It's the tale of the Stasi (East German secret police)'s secret museum of smells. "One of the more bizarre activities the Stasi was found to have engaged in was the collection of Geruchsproben — smell samples — for the benefit of the East German smell hounds. The odors, collected during interrogations using a perforated metal “smell sample chair” or by breaking into people’s homes and stealing their dirty underwear, were stored in small glass jars."

As the article says "the thing about the Stasi is that they illustrate just how daffy any totalitarian authority structure necessarily becomes. Tyrants all have their Rasputins, mystic goonybirds whose theories about human biology, governance, magic, and life end up steering the state into ever-tighter circles of rabid tail-biting."

The application to PARANOIA is obvious. Track down that Commie, Troubleshooter - your only clue is this scent. Off you go!

(Allen reminds me to plug the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society, another source of great weird links.)
Posted by: Gareth Hanrahan / 10:20 AM

Comments:
The same was done in the 80's by one of our secret services during a left-wing-terrorist scare, but abandoned after public outrage(German only).
Schäuble, our Minister of the Interior re-introduced this measure recently before the G8 Summit to snoop on people he suspected to be Terrorists planning to attack (i.e. protest) the summit.
So this hits a little too close to home... (but it is funny to imagine a dog testifying in court about what it smelled (oh wait, only mutant commie traitors need courts (forget I mentioned that)))
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : July 03, 2007 12:59 PM
 
How about the application where the troubleshooters are sitting on metal chairs with holes in them and collectors underneath during debriefing and being ordered to sweat more? Prove your loyalty, citizen! No, now you're sweating too much! That's unhygenic! Less! Sweat less! No, more! Are you TRYING to be insubordinate?
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : July 07, 2007 7:39 PM
 
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