[Serenity RPG] : The Matter of the Reavers

This speculation was inspired by a post on the Reavers on The Black Campbell journal. The Reavers have always been a subject of debate among the watchers of Firefly and Serenity - How does their social structure work? How do they reproduce? Is Pax the only thing that causes Reavers? And so on.

However the major problem with the Reavers as portrayed in Firefly/Serenity universe merrily jaunting around the System canibalising and raping in Spaceships without radiation shielding rarely seemed to be discussed.

Namely the Reavers shouldn't exist - they should all be dead. They should be desicated irradiated mummies floating through the Black in lethally 'hot' corpse ships.

People can die several weeks after prolonged exposure to a teaspoon of radioactive material scavenged from radiological medical equipment. So the idea that you can spend years on ships with nuclear reactors without any radiation protection is ludicrous. You are not going to walk away with a few radiation burns as has been depicted (or sterility as I have seen proposed). You are going to be dead - and dead in days and weeks, not months and years. Being crazy is no protection from radiation sickness.

So the question has to be how do the Reavers survive? In my proposed 'Verse - I say that they have help. Someone is keeping them going by providing a vital medicine - containing anti-rads, steorids, anti-bacterials, aggressive mood enhancers etc.

Suppose there was an organization obsessed with human evolution and potential, an organization that say conducted experiments on human anomalies such as "Readers". This group would be very interested in a group of people on the outskirts of the System that had gone all Texas Chainsaw Massacre. [As a note - the events of Serenity didn't occur in my 'Verse. Reavers weren't caused by Pax - they were caused by some form of group hysteria as they went bat-sh*t crazy].

Suppose this Organization made a bargain with the first Reavers that in exchange for the bodies of dead Reavers, Reavers were given an experimental medicine that would keep them going. There may be a moon in Reaver space where the bodies are dumped and the Medication picked up. I assume that direct contact between the two groups is avoided. This group may even have helped "recruit" Reavers by experimenting on condemned criminals to see whether they could replicate the mindset of the Reavers - and sending the results into Reaver space (possibly with surveillance equipment to study their lifestyle).

I would also assume that information regarding Reaver lifestyles that was gathered would be studied by computers first to avoid possibly "turning" the scientists studying them.

Now there may be other reasons why this Organization helps the Reavers apart from them providing medical test subjects for anti-radiation and mood altering substances. The Reavers provide a justification for the Alliance military and military spending. Reaver attacks encourage the Rim Worlds to seek Alliance protection. In any case this Organization can provide numerous scenario possibilities and its support of the Reavers would certainly be a far more horrible secret than the one in Serenity.