Seb said:
Afterlife is a stop-gap, a rite of passage for Inhumans. The more interesting area is a possible homeland that those who have passed through the mists inhabit (I wasn't imagining the implication that one exists, right?) Since they have been around so long, it could be quite feasible that they already have a homeland that they have inhabited longer than the current 'owners' of the land. The US, for example, was only beginning to be claimed by Europeans (Native American tribes didn't, I think, consider land to be 'ownable') in the 14-1500s. If the Inhumans were there first, then who does that land belong to? At that point, even if SHIELD were still authorised to act on behalf of other governments, would they have any right to stop them from doing whatever they wanted?
Roughly, I would say the land would belong to those born there and also those allowed by those people, according to some rules. That's a rough approximation, though, not a general theory about who owns which land. In practice, would make an assessment on a case-by-case basis depending on the info available (there is the question of "born where?" e.g., what counts as the relevant territory, and a number of other difficult issues).
With regard to lands inhabited by their ancestors but which inhuman communities have not inhabited for a long time, I don't think they have a good claim.
On the other hand, if they do have a homeland like that - i.e., one that their communities have inhabited continuously for a long time ("long" is fuzzy, but roughly speaking), I would say that that is their territory, and SHIELD shouldn't be indexing them as long as they remain there.
But I'm not sure there is support for that on the show, though I concede I may have missed something. On that note, you ask "I wasn't imagining the implication that one exists, right?". I wasn't implying that, but if you're talking about an implication on the show, in that case, I think that would be both interesting and relevant to the matter at hand, but I seem to have missed it. What do you have in mind?
Seb said:
Also, on a more philosophical note, what does and does not count as a weapon? I, for example, studied chemistry at university to a degree that if I spent some time reading up on the specifics and could be bothered to do the research (never once doing anything illegal) I could probably create some pretty horrific weapons with over the counter materials. Hell, my biological knowledge may be approaching that necessary to create messed up diseases (it's not, I sucked at Biology, but those in my class that were good might be capable). Another person might learn a martial art to the point that they are close to being a living weapon without having to register with anyone.
I guess that would be my (Inhuman) response to SHIELD, that a well enough educated human could do the same amount of damage as even Lincoln or Skye. If they aren't on a list, why should the Inhumans be? (The sovereign nation part notwithstanding)
That's an interesting philosophical question (i.e., what's a weapon?), but I don't think they need to address that in this case,
For example, SHIELD might reply:
There are things, like C4, or rockets capable of reaching orbit or any part of the planet, enriched uranium - and a long list - that have both military and civilian usages.
But we - our governments, that is - have the authority to strictly regulate the possession and use of such things, given the danger they pose to the public if they fall into the wrong hands.
For example, if a person wants to buy C4, they need to pass legitimate background tests. And if they buy large quantities - say, for mining operations -, they're still not allowed to take the C4 anywhere they want and whenever they want - let alone unsupervised.
Instead, they must keep it in some secure facilities, that meet certain standards. The personnel with access to it also has to pass a number of tests. And so on.
So, if a person wants to engage in a ritual that may well give her a more destructive power than, say, carrying a suitcase full of C4 with them all the time, they would have to pass a number of background checks - including psychological tests.
After they pass the tests, we would need to study what they can do in order to restrict their movements in our country - if needed, and as needed.
For example, if a person goes through terrigenesis and gets the power you (i.e., Ms. Jiaying) have, then once we have checked that there is no other effect, no further restriction is needed. Still, given that we still don't understand much about these powers (and whether they'll change=, the person would have to meet with our agents regularly, for some basic assessment, but other than that, there would be no restrictions - of course, as long as they meet the general conditions apply to people who want to enter our countries.
On the other hand, if the person has a power that allows them to cause as much destruction as a machine gun, then much more strict rules are applied. At least, we would want to track them at all times - with a tracking device -, regularly meet with them to test that they're psychologically fit to go around with that kind of capability, and definitely they wouldn't be allowed in sensitive places, like the vicinity of strategic government or military facilities.
Moreover, if they have a power that is much more destructive than that - like your daughter's -, we would need them to remain in a place separated from the general population, at least unless we have specific reasons to allow otherwise (e.g., so that she fights against bad people with powers, she's one of our agents, etc.). We would need constant monitoring too. As long as they live in the countryside in open areas, there should be no problem, but we need to monitor that.
Granted, some of your people may feel that this is too much of a restriction. But they don't need to go through terrigenesis - at least, in nearly all cases, that's a choice -, and in any event, we do have the right (and the duty) to impose restrictions to the possession of things capable of much or even mass destruction.
Yes, granted, a person trained in martial arts can do a lot of damage too. But it's not on the same scale. For example, a group of, say, a dozen civilians in reasonably good health, or a couple of police officers - with their guns -, would probably be able to stop a martial artist trying to wreak havoc. But even much larger forces would be at serious risk if they had to fight someone with the powers of Lincoln or Skye.
Moreover, someone with that kind of powers can take down a building - or worse - before anyone can react, and - if no one is tracking them -, they'll probably be able to bring down many buildings before the authorities can even figure out who the attacker is, and where the fire is coming from.
So, it's not the same scale of threats.
Granted, some people in your community have powers that, while capable of some destruction, are capable of much less destruction than that. We're not planning to restrict their movements in our countries to the same extent as in the case of those with much greater destructive power.
However, we don't know in advance (i.e., before terrigenesis) who will get what power, so testing is needed in order to find out what level of surveillance and - if needed - restriction of movements while in our countries we need to apply.
With regard to the problem of biological weapons, if we were to concede your point on the basis that a well enough educated human could do the same amount of damage as even Lincoln or Skye, on the same basis we should scrap our laws banning or restricting access to C4, rockets, uranium, and even machine guns or hand grenades - since Lincoln or Skye can do more damage than that.
However, that would clearly result in massive casualties, given all of the bad people who want to, well, cause mass casualties among civilians.
That said, I will grant you that our laws are imperfect and there are loopholes that might allow some people with the right knowledge and resources to make nasty biological weapons. However, let me point out two things:
1. Making and/or having those weapons - and not the just using them - is banned and for good reasons, even if some information that a smart person might be able to use to figure out how to make them is not. If some of those weapons can be made with publicly available things, that's a problem, and we would have to assess which of those things to ban or restrict depending on factors such as threat level. But the fact that our laws are imperfect and have missed some stuff does not make the laws that do ban or strictly regulate many dangerous things, unjustified, as per the examples above.
2. It's actually difficult to get the combination of knowledge and resources make such weapons. Granted, Hydra has managed to do that. But there are a number of terrorist organizations who would very much like to carry out devastating biological attacks against our civilians, but they haven't managed to do so even once. If it were even moderately easy to make those weapons and cause such destruction, we would see that happening often. We don't. If that began to happen or we saw a significant risk, we would need to update our laws, restricting some freedoms to some extent in order to protect the public. Sometimes, it's a difficult call. But bans or strict restrictions on things like enriched uranium, C4, rockets or machine guns aren't among those difficult calls. And given the kind of powers terrigenesis can bestow, terrigenesis and the resulting powers - considering the different degrees, as mentioned above - isn't among those difficult calls, either.
