MAlign's Houdini evacuation order?

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:The problem was, in its original plan, not alerting the wrong people that people were disappearing right in the middle of the mass exodus causing people to investigate. Which is also related to the question of why the people didn't just leave legally. "Hey, I want out of this marriage and off of this planet. I will send you divorce papers." All problems are solved, simply, easily, no fuss no bother.

Yes, the highlighted part IS the initial problem and remained the problem through the end. The Malign did not want anyone to know that people were disappearing; they definitely did not want anyone to think that people were moving to an unknown planet. Getting a divorce and moving to a known planet is NOT disappearing. Maybe there are other ways to accomplish this; but the Malign decided that the best thing would be to fake the deaths of the extracted people and as additional cover, to bury those deaths in a bunch of other deaths.

Now maybe if Houdini did not have to be expedited, there would not have been as many major death events. I believe it is stated somewhere in the books that the Green Pines explosion gives them cover to use a lot of other "terrorist" explosions to expedite the extractions. But even before the schedule was accelerated, the Malign wanted the extracted people to be considered dead.

Jonathan"S wrote:It wasn't just that the MAlign didn't want the disappearances detected in the middle. They didn't want them to be discovered even after the evacuation was complete -- as that would give an enemy intelligence on who had been evacuated, thus who had been working for the MAlign, and by looking into each one's specialties, movements before disappearing, friends and (remaining) family too many pieces might be reconstructed.

The rate at which you can disappear people without it becoming apparent, even with hindsight, that the people had been disappeared is vastly lower (baring mass casualty events to "kill" them in in shiploads) than the rate at which you can disappear people if you only need it to remain undetected until the last of them hyper out of the system.

For the later short term explanations for why they're not around is sufficient, vacation, work travel, etc. might only need to delay suspicion by weeks or months -- but if you need to keep everyone from realizing mass disappearances happened then those aren't sufficient because when suddenly lots of people took trips they inexplicably didn't return from that makes them stand out as a group. (Exactly what the MAlign didn't want)

If a handful of people send a Dear John letter and take off without further communications to their friends or family that's concerning to those involved but not anything that would attract intelligence organizations. After all there's a certain natural average background level of that happening. But if there was suddenly an excess 10,000 of those in a month that kind of statistical anomaly will stand out like a sore thumb and invite closer scrutiny by those trying to find the MAlign's secret organization.

penny wrote:It is going to be obvious anyway. Were the MA planning to fake the deaths of 10,000+ people a month? A sudden surge in suspicious deaths should arouse alarm much faster than anything else. And the occupation of those snuffed out people would be available too.

Filing for divorce should do it. Sign over all assets to the spouse and then skedaddle. Those people wouldn't even be searched for.

At any rate, the MA should have been concerned only with a successful extraction, and not concerned with knowledge of that extraction or the content of the people extracted at the end of the day.

I understand the notion, mind you, it is the same in Hollywood and in real life. If you want to disappear and not have people chasing you, then fake your death. But trying to fake that many deaths should have been considered too risky and also considered to be a red flag. Besides, it ain't like they would ever be found. And exactly what could be put together about their plan from the occupations of the people?

I suppose that specific people might have been involved in classified areas whereas their movements might have been traced. But the majority?

Anyway, the method they chose seems more risky than simply lying and leaving. But I suppose since it has worked they were right.


The best method would have been to load everyone on a ship headed to wherever individually, then faking the destruction of that ship.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:It is going to be obvious anyway. Were the MA planning to fake the deaths of 10,000+ people a month? A sudden surge in suspicious deaths should arouse alarm much faster than anything else. And the occupation of those snuffed out people would be available too.

Filing for divorce should do it. Sign over all assets to the spouse and then skedaddle. Those people wouldn't even be searched for.

At any rate, the MA should have been concerned only with a successful extraction, and not concerned with knowledge of that extraction or the content of the people extracted at the end of the day.

I understand the notion, mind you, it is the same in Hollywood and in real life. If you want to disappear and not have people chasing you, then fake your death. But trying to fake that many deaths should have been considered too risky and also considered to be a red flag. Besides, it ain't like they would ever be found. And exactly what could be put together about their plan from the occupations of the people?

I suppose that specific people might have been involved in classified areas whereas their movements might have been traced. But the majority?

Anyway, the method they chose seems more risky than simply lying and leaving. But I suppose since it has worked they were right.


The best method would have been to load everyone on a ship headed to wherever individually, then faking the destruction of that ship.

Well no, the MAlign was planning to have probably at least a decade over which to slowly pull their people out. At that low a rate they wouldn't need to fake their deaths.

That gives time for divorces, or better job offers offworld, or divisions or companies to be purchased and relocated offworld, etc. etc. And time to allow (or fake) correspondence so that the people who left kind of fell out of touch with their friend and acquaintances back on Mesa. So it didn't look like they'd disappeared from the face of the universe.


Faking their deaths was an emergency improvisation when they had to radically accelerate the evacuation. And yes the mass deaths attracted attention -- but not attention focused on where the people went; instead it was attention focused on who'd carried of these heinous terrorist attacks. And if the attacks killed enough collateral residents, who had zero association with the MAlign, then that really muddies the water for any investigators. Many (maybe most) of the casualties they could might look into there'd be nothing to find.

Whereas if they'd rapidly disappeared only the MAlign people (with whatever statistically anomalous cover stories) then there aren't all those red herrings around to distract, slow, or mislead anybody investigating the issue.