Synergy often means layoffs. As in, we merged two companies and now have two of every department, one of each has to go, and the remainder can do the work of both (yay synergy).
Because this style of game appealed to two clusters of gamers. The first one is small and niche, and thus not profitable. The second one are the griefers who only want to play if they have victims available, which isn't going to happen in a small & niche game.
These kinds of games *do* exist, they're just, well, small & niche as they've learned to either build in protections against griefers and/or stay small enough to not attract notice. If you find yourself in the first cluster and not the second, you may want to check out the latest project from Raph Koster, aka Designer Dragon from UO. [1]
I agree we don't have much to (physically) fear from it...yet. But the people who can't take "no" for an answer and don't get that it is fundamentally non-human, I can believe they are quite dangerous.
This Chinese study says it was dispersed through global atmospheric circulation and mentions the liquid and gaseous discharge from nuclear facilities at Sellafield (UK) and La Hague (France) as sources. Russian tests are mentioned as well but they are apparently not the sole or primary source.
100% agree on banning glue traps. Snap traps aren't perfect though. I had to finish off a mighty survivor of one once. The rat was huge. When I heard the rattling in the shed I panicked and grabbed a shovel lying nearby. My mind has erased the memory of what happened next, I just remember the aftermath and being splattered with lots of rat blood. I deeply regret doing that and wish I had let her limp away to an uncertain fate. I stopped setting traps after that and just let them run rampant through the moldy old walls of that place until I moved.
