title: Human nature

text: Trait patterns, on Ramsey's account, can be captured in the form of conditional statements, such as "if female, you develop ovaries" or "if male, you develop testes." These statements will not be true of all humans. Ramsey contends that these statements capture part of human nature if they have a good balance of "pervasiveness" (many people satisfy the antecedent of the conditional statement), and "robustness" (many people who satisfy the antecedent go on to satisfy the consequent).


title: Human nature

text: The contemporary debate between so-called “bioconservatives” and “transhumanists” is directly related to the concept of human nature: transhumanists argue that "current human nature is improvable through the use of applied science and other rational methods." Bioconservatives believe that the costs outweigh the benefits: in particular, they present their position as a defense of human nature which, according to them, is threatened by human enhancement technologies. Although this debate is mainly of an ethical kind, it is deeply rooted in the different interpretations of human nature, human freedom, and human dignity (which, according to bioconservatives, is specific to human beings, while transhumanists think that it can be possessed also by posthumans). As explained by Allen Buchanan, the literature against human enhancement is characterized by two main concerns: that "enhancement may alter or destroy human nature" and that "if enhancement alters or destroys human nature, this will undercut our ability to ascertain the good," as "the good is determined by our nature."


title: Human nature

text: Bioconservatives include Jürgen Habermas, Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama, and Bill McKibben. Some of the reasons why they oppose (certain forms of) human enhancement technology are to be found in the worry that such technology would be “dehumanizing” (as they would undermine the human dignity intrinsically built in our human nature). For instance, they fear that becoming “posthumans” could pose a threat to “ordinary” humans or be harmful to posthumans themselves.


title: Human nature

text: Jürgen Habermas makes the argument against the specific case of genetic modification of unborn children by their parents, referred to as “eugenic programming” by Habermas. His argument is two-folded: The most immediate threat is on the “ethical freedom” of programmed individuals, and the subsequent threat is on the viability of liberal democracy. Reasoning of the former can be formulated as the following: Genetic programming of desirable traits, capabilities and dispositions puts restrictions on a person's freedom to choose a life of his own, to be the "sole author" of his existence. A genetically-programmed child may feel "alienated" from his identity, which is now irreversibly co-written by human agents other than himself. This feeling of alienation, resulted from“contingency of a life's beginning that is not at [one's] disposal,” makes it difficult for genetically-modified persons to perceive themselves as moral agents who can make ethical judgement freely and independently - that is, without any substantial or definitive interference from another agent. Habermas proposes a second threat - the undermining power of genetic programming on the viability of democracy. The basis of liberal democracy, Habermas rightfully claims, is the symmetrical and independent mutual recognition among free, equal and autonomous persons. Genetic programming jeopardizes this condition by irreversibly subjecting children to permanent dependence on their parents, thus depriving them of their "perceived" ability to be full citizens of the legal community. This fundamental modification to human relationship erodes the foundation of liberal democracy and puts its viability in danger.


title: Human nature

text: The most famous proponent of transhumanism, on the other hand, is Oxford Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom. According to Bostrom, "human enhancement technologies should be made widely available," as they would offer enormous potential for improving the lives of human beings, without "dehumanizing" them: for instance, improving their intellectual and physical capacities, or protecting them from suffering, illnesses, aging, and physical and cognitive shortcomings. In response to bioconservatives, transhumanists argue that expanding a person's "capability set" would increase her freedom of choice, rather than reducing it.


title: Human nature

text: Allen Buchanan has questioned the relevance of the concept of human nature to this debate. In "Human Nature and Enhancement", he argued that good but also bad characteristics are part of human nature, and that changing the "bad" ones does not necessarily imply that the "good" ones will be affected. Moreover, Buchanan argued that the way we evaluate the good is independent of human nature: in fact, we can "make coherent judgements about the defective aspects of human nature, and if those defects were readied this need not affect our ability to judge what is good". Buchanan's conclusion is that the debate on enhancement of human beings would be more fruitful if it was conducted without appealing to the concept of human nature.


title: Human nature

text: Tim Lewens presented a similar position: since the only notions of human nature which are compatible with biology offer "no ethical guidance in debates over enhancement", we should set the concept of human nature aside when debating about enhancement. On the other hand, "folk", neo-Aristotelian conceptions of human nature seem to have normative implications, but they have no basis in scientific research. Grant Ramsey replied to these claims, arguing that his "life-history trait cluster" account allows the concept of human nature "to inform questions of human enhancement".


title: Human nature

text: Appeals to nature often fall foul of the naturalistic fallacy, whereby certain capacities or traits are considered morally 'good' in virtue of their "naturalness." The fallacy was initially introduced by G. E. Moore in 1903, who challenged philosopher's attempts to define "good" reductively, in terms of natural properties (such as "desirable"). Reliance on 'the natural' as a justification for resisting enhancement is criticised on several grounds by transhumanists, against the bioconservative motivation to preserve or protect 'human nature'.


title: Human nature

text: For example, Nick Bostrom asserts "had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder" thus not worthy of unqualified protection. Similarly, Arthur Caplan opposes naturalistic objections to life extension enhancements, by claiming that:The explanation of why ageing occurs has many of the attributes of a stochastic or chance phenomenon. And this makes ageing unnatural and in no way an intrinsic part of human nature. As such, there is no reason why it is intrinsically wrong to try to reverse or cure ageing.


title: Human nature

text: Science writer and journalist Matt Ridley argued that understanding human nature, and its evolution over time, requires "understanding how human sexuality evolved."


title: Human nature

text: Instinctual behaviour, an inherent inclination towards a particular complex behaviour, has been observed in humans. Emotions such as fear are part of human nature (see Fear § Innate fear for example). However they are also known to have been malleable and not fixed (see neuroplasticity and Fear § Inability to experience fear).


title: Human nature

text: Congenital fear of snakes and spiders was found in six-month-old babies. Infant cry is a manifestation of instinct. The infant cannot otherwise protect itself for survival during its long period of maturation. The maternal instinct, manifest particularly in response to the infant cry, has long been respected as one of the most powerful. Its mechanism has been partly elucidated by observations with functional MRI of the mother’s brain.


title: Human nature

text: The herd instinct is found in human children and chimpanzee cubs, but is apparently absent in young orangutans.


title: Human nature

text: Squeamishness and disgust in humans is an instinct developed during evolution to protect the body and avoid infection by various diseases.


title: Human nature

text: Testosterone (main male sex hormone) primes several instincts, especially sexuality; also dominance, manifest in self-affirmation, the urge to win over rivals (see competitiveness), to dominate a hierarchy (see dominance hierarchy), and to respond to violent signals in men (see aggression), with weakening of empathy. In men, a decrease in testosterone level after the birth of a child in the family was found, so that the father’s energies are more directed to nurturing, protecting and caring for the child. Unduly high levels of this hormone are often associated in a person with aggressiveness, illegal behavior, violence against others, such phenomena as banditry, etc. This is confirmed by studies conducted in prisons. The amount of testosterone in men may increase dramatically in response to any competition. In men, the level of testosterone varies depending on whether it is susceptible to the smell of an ovulating or non-ovulatory woman (see menstrual cycle). Men exposed to the odors of ovulating women maintained a stable level of testosterone, which was higher than the level of testosterone in men exposed to non-ovulatory signals. This is due to the fact that an ovulating woman is capable of conceiving, and therefore a man who feels the smell of an ovulating woman is given a signal to sexual activity.


title: Human nature

text: The socioeconomic environment of humans are a context which affect their brain development. It has been argued that "H. sapiens" is unsustainable by nature – that unsustainability is an inevitable emergent property of his unaltered nature. It has also been argued that human nature is not necessarily resulting in unsustainability but is embedded in and affected by a socioeconomic system that is not having an inevitable structure – that the contemporary socioeconomic macrosystem affects human activities. A paper published in 1997 concluded that humanity suffer consequences of a "poor fit" between inherited natures and "many of the constructed environments in organizational society". Designing a "cultural narrative" explicitly for living on a finite planet may be suitable for overriding "outdated" innate tendencies.


title: Human nature

text: Human nature – which some have argued to vary to some extent per individual and in time, not be static and, at least in the future, to some extent be purposely alterable – is one of the factors that shape which, how and when human activities are conducted. The contemporary socioeconomic and collective decision-making mechanisms are structures that may affect the expression of human nature – for instance, innate tendencies to seek survival, well-being, respect and status that some consider fundamental to humans may result in varying product-designs, types of work, public infrastructure-designs and the distribution and prevalence of each. As with the nature versus nurture debate, which is concerned whether – or to which degrees – human behavior is determined by the environment or by a person's genes, scientific research is inconclusive about the degree to which human nature is shaped by and manageable by systemic structures as well as about how and to which degrees these structures can and should be purposely altered swiftly globally.


title: White Rose

text: The White Rose (, ) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students (and one professor) at the University of Munich: Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime. Their activities started in Munich on 27 June 1942; they ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943. They, as well as other members and supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced show trials by the Nazi People's Court (); many of them were sentenced to death or imprisonment.


title: White Rose

text: Hans and Sophie Scholl, as well as Christoph Probst were executed by guillotine four days after their arrest, on 22 February 1943. During the trial, Sophie interrupted the judge multiple times. No defendants were given any opportunity to speak.


title: White Rose

text: The group wrote, printed and initially distributed their pamphlets in the greater Munich region. Later on, secret carriers brought copies to other cities, mostly in the southern parts of Germany. In July 1943, Allied Planes dropped their sixth and final leaflet over Germany with the headline "The Manifesto of the Students of Munich." In total, the White Rose authored six leaflets, which were multiplied and spread, in a total of about 15,000 copies. They denounced the Nazi regime's crimes and oppression, and called for resistance. In their second leaflet, they openly denounced the persecution and mass murder of the Jews. By the time of their arrest, the members of the White Rose were just about to establish contacts with other German resistance groups like the Kreisau Circle or the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group of the Red Orchestra. Today, the White Rose is well known both within Germany and worldwide.


title: White Rose

text: Students from the University of Munich comprised the core of the White Rose: Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, Christoph Probst, and Kurt Huber, a professor of philosophy and musicology. Hans's younger sister, Sophie later came to be a core member of the White Rose.


title: White Rose

text: They were supported by other people, including: Otl Aicher, ("Grogo"), Theodor Haecker, Anneliese Graf, Traute Lafrenz, Katharina Schüddekopf, Lieselotte "Lilo" Ramdohr, , Falk Harnack, Marie-Luise Jahn, , Manfred Eickemeyer, , , , , Helmut Bauer, , Hans Conrad Leipelt, Gisela Schertling, Rudi Alt, Michael Brink, Lilo Dreyfeldt, Josef Furtmeier, Günter Ammon, Fred Thieler and Wolfgang Jaeger. Most were in their early twenties. Wilhelm Geyer taught Alexander Schmorell how to make the tin templates used in the graffiti campaign. Eugen Grimminger of Stuttgart funded their operations. Grimminger was arrested on 2 March 1943, sentenced to ten years in a penal institution for high treason by the "People's Court" on 19 April 1943, and imprisoned in Ludwigsburg penal institution until April 1945. His wife Jenny was murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, presumably on 2 December 1943. Grimminger's secretary Tilly Hahn contributed her own funds to the cause, and acted as go-between for Grimminger and the group in Munich. She frequently carried supplies such as envelopes, paper, and an additional duplicating machine from Stuttgart to Munich. In addition, a group of students in the city of Ulm distributed a number of the group's leaflets and were arrested and tried with the group from Munich. Among this group were Sophie Scholl's childhood friend Susanne Hirzel and her teenage brother and Franz Josef Müller. In Hamburg, a group of students including , , , , , , , , , Ilse Ledien, Eva von Dumreicher, Dorothea Zill, Apelles Sobeczko, and formed the resistance group against the National Socialist regime and distributed the group's leaflets.


title: White Rose

text: White Rose survivor Jürgen Wittenstein described what it was like for ordinary Germans to live in Nazi Germany:


title: White Rose

text: The activities of the White Rose started in the autumn of 1942. This was a time that was particularly critical for the Nazi regime; after initial victories in World War II, the German population became increasingly aware of the losses and damages of the war. In Summer 1942, the German Wehrmacht was preparing a new military campaign in the southern part of the East front to regain the initiative after their earlier defeat close to Moscow. This German offensive was initially very successful, but came to a standstill in the autumn of 1942. In February 1943, the German army had faced a major defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad. During this time, the authors of the pamphlets could neither be discovered, nor could the campaign be stopped by the Nazi authorities. When Hans and Sophie Scholl were discovered and arrested whilst distributing leaflets at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the regime reacted brutally. As the "Volksgerichtshof" was not bound to the law, but led by Nazi ideology, its actions were declared unlawful in post-war Germany. Thus, the execution of the White Rose group members, among many others, is considered as judicial murder.


title: White Rose

text: The members of the core group all shared an academic background as students at Munich University. The Scholl siblings, Christoph Probst, Willi Graf and Alexander Schmorell were all raised by independently thinking and wealthy parents. Alexander Schmorell was born in Russia, and his first language was Russian. After he and Hans Scholl had become friends at the university, Alexander invited Hans to his parents' home, where Hans also met Christoph Probst at the beginning of 1941. Alexander Schmorell and Christoph Probst had already been friends since their school days. As Christoph's father had been divorced and had married again to a Jewish wife, the effects of the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, and Nazi racial ideology had impacts on both Christoph's and Alexander's lives from early on.


title: White Rose

text: The ideas and thoughts of the German Youth Movement, founded in 1896, had a major impact on the German youth at the beginning of the twentieth century. The movement aimed at providing free space to develop a healthy life. A common trait of the various organizations was a romantic longing for a pristine state of things, and a return to older cultural traditions, with a strong emphasis on independent, non-conformist thinking. They propagated a return to nature, confraternity and shared adventures. The (abbreviated as "d.j.1.11.") was part of this youth movement, founded by Eberhard Koebel in 1929. Christoph Probst was a member of the German Youth Movement, and Willi Graf was a member of ("New Germany"), and the ("Grey Convent"), which were illegal Catholic youth organizations.


title: White Rose

text: The Nazi Party's youth organizations took over some of the elements of the Youth Movement, and engaged their members in activities similar to the adventures of the Boy Scouts, but also subjected them to ideological indoctrination. Some, but not all, of the White Rose members had enthusiastically joined the youth organizations of the Nazi party: Hans Scholl had joined the Hitler Youth, and Sophie Scholl was a member of the . Membership in both party youth organizations was compulsory for young Germans, although a few—such as Willi Graf, Otl Aicher, and Heinz Brenner—refused to join. Sophie and Hans' sister Inge Scholl reported about the initial enthusiasm of the young people for the Nazi youth organization, to their parents' dismay:


title: White Rose

text: Youth organizations other than those led by the Nazi party were dissolved and officially forbidden in 1936. Both Hans Scholl and Willi Graf were arrested in 1937–38 because of their membership in forbidden Youth Movement organizations. Hans Scholl had joined the 1. 11. in 1934, when he and other Hitler Youth members in Ulm considered membership in this group and the Hitler Youth to be compatible. Hans Scholl was also accused of transgressing the German anti-homosexuality law, because of a same-sex teen relationship dating back to 1934–1935, when Hans was only 16 years old. The argument was built partially on the work of Eckard Holler, a sociologist specializing in the German Youth Movement, as well as on the Gestapo interrogation transcripts from the 1937–38 arrest, and with reference to historian George Mosse's discussion of the homoerotic aspects of the German Youth Movement. As Mosse indicated, idealized romantic attachments among male youths were not uncommon in Germany, especially among members of the associations. It was argued that the experience of being persecuted may have led both Hans and Sophie to identify with the victims of the Nazi state, providing another explanation for why Hans and Sophie Scholl made their way from ardent "Hitler Youth" leaders to passionate opponents of the Nazi regime.


title: White Rose

text: The White Rose group was motivated by ethical, moral, and religious considerations. They supported and took in individuals of all backgrounds, and it did not depend on race, sex, religion, or age. They came from various religious backgrounds. Willi Graf and Katharina Schüddekopf were devout Catholics. Alexander Schmorell was an Orthodox Christian. Traute Lafrenz adhered to the concepts of anthroposophy, while Eugen Grimminger considered himself a Buddhist. Christoph Probst was baptized a Catholic only shortly before his execution. His father Hermann was nominally a Catholic, but also a private scholar of Eastern thought and wisdom. In their diaries and letters to friends, both Scholl siblings wrote about their reading of Christian scholars including Augustine of Hippo's "Confessions" and Etienne Gilson, whose work on Medieval philosophy they discussed amongst other philosophical works within their network of friends. The Scholls read sermons by John Henry Newman, and Sophie gave two volumes of Newman's sermons to her boyfriend, Fritz Hartnagel, when he was assigned to the Eastern Front; he wrote to her: "[W]e know by whom we are created, and that we stand in a relationship of moral obligation to our creator. Conscience gives us the capacity to distinguish between good and evil." This is a paraphrase of Newman's sermon, "The Testimony of Conscience".


title: White Rose

text: In 1941, Hans Scholl read a copy of a sermon by an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, Catholic Bishop August von Galen, decrying the euthanasia policies expressed in Action T4 (and extended that same year to the Nazi concentration camps by Action 14f13) which the Nazis maintained would protect the German gene pool. Horrified by the Nazi policies, Sophie obtained permission to reprint the sermon and distribute it at the University of Munich.


title: White Rose

text: In 1940, Otl Aicher had met Carl Muth, the founder of the Catholic magazine "Hochland". Otl in turn introduced Hans Scholl to Muth in 1941. In his letters to Muth, Hans wrote about his growing attraction to the Catholic Christian faith. Both Hans and Sophie Scholl were influenced by Carl Muth whom they describe as deeply religious, and opposed to Nazism. He drew the Scholl siblings' attention to the persecution of the Jews, which he considered sinful and anti-Christian.


title: White Rose

text: Both Sophie Scholl and Willi Graf attended some of Kurt Huber's lectures at the University of Munich. Kurt Huber was known amongst his students for the political innuendos which he used to include in his university lectures, by which he criticized Nazi ideology by talking about classical philosophers like Leibniz. He met Hans Scholl for the first time in June 1942, was admitted to the activities of the White Rose on 17 December 1942, and became their mentor and the main author of the sixth pamphlet.


title: White Rose

text: Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Christoph Probst, and Willi Graf were medical students. Their studies were regularly interrupted by terms of compulsory service as student soldiers in the Wehrmacht medical corps on the Eastern Front. Their experience during this time had a major impact on their thinking, and it also motivated their resistance, because it led to their disillusionment with the Nazi regime. Alexander Schmorell, who was born in Orenburg and raised by Russian nurses, spoke perfect Russian, which allowed him to have direct contact and communication with the local Russian population and their plight. This Russian insight proved invaluable during their time there, and he could convey to his fellow White Rose members what was not understood or even heard by other Germans coming from the Eastern front.


title: White Rose

text: In summer 1942, Hans, Alexander, and Willi had to serve for three months on the Russian front alongside many other male medical students from the University of Munich. There, they observed the horrors of war, saw beatings and other mistreatment of Jews by the Germans, and heard about the persecution of the Jews from reliable sources. Some witnessed atrocities of the war on the battlefield and against civilian populations in the East. In a letter to his sister Anneliese, Willi Graf wrote: "I wish I had been spared the view of all this which I had to witness." Gradually, detachment gave way to the conviction that something had to be done. It was not enough to keep to oneself one's beliefs, and ethical standards, but the time had come to act.


title: White Rose

text: The members of the White Rose were fully aware of the risks they incurred by their acts of resistance:


title: White Rose

text: Under Gestapo interrogation, Hans Scholl gave several explanations for the origin of the name "The White Rose", and suggested he may have chosen it while he was under the emotional influence of a 19th-century poem with the same name by German poet Clemens Brentano. It has also been speculated that the name might have been taken from either the Cuban poet, Jose Marti's verse "Cultivo una rosa blanca" or the novel "Die Weiße Rose" ("The White Rose") by B. Traven, which Hans Scholl and Alex Schmorell had both read. They also wrote that the symbol of the white rose was intended to represent purity and innocence in the face of evil.


title: White Rose

text: If the White Rose was indeed named after the novel, Hans Scholl's interrogation testimony may have been intentionally vague in order to protect Josef Söhngen, the anti-Nazi bookseller who had supplied this banned book. Söhngen had provided the White Rose members with a safe meeting place for the exchange of information and to receive occasional financial contributions. Söhngen kept a stash of banned books hidden in his store, and had also hidden the pamphlets when they had been printed.


title: White Rose

text: After their experiences at the Eastern Front, having learned about mass murder in Poland and the Soviet Union, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell felt compelled to take action. From end of June until mid of July 1942, they wrote the first four leaflets. Quoting extensively from the Bible, Aristotle and Novalis, as well as Goethe and Schiller, the iconic poets of German bourgeoisie, they appealed to what they considered the German intelligentsia, believing that these people would be easily convinced by the same arguments that also motivated the authors themselves. These leaflets were left in telephone books in public phone booths, mailed to professors and students, and taken by courier to other universities for distribution. From 23 July to 30 October 1942, Graf, Scholl and Schmorell served again at the Soviet front, and activities ceased until their return. In autumn 1942, Sophie Scholl discovered that her brother Hans was one of the authors of the pamphlets, and joined the group. Shortly after, Willi Graf, and by the end of December 1942, Kurt Huber became members of the White Rose.


title: White Rose

text: In January 1943, the fifth leaflet, ""Aufruf an alle Deutsche!"" ("Appeal to all Germans!") was produced in 6,000–9,000 copies, using a hand-operated duplicating machine. It was carried to other German Cities between 27 and 29 January 1943 by the members and supporters of the group to many cities, and then mailed from there. Copies appeared in Saarbrücken, Stuttgart, Cologne, Vienna, Freiburg, Chemnitz, Hamburg, Innsbruck and Berlin. Sophie Scholl stated during her Gestapo interrogation that from summer 1942 on, the aim of the White Rose was to address a broader range of the population. Consequently, in the fifth leaflet, the name of the group was changed from White Rose to "German Resistance Movement", and also the style of writing became more polemic and less intellectual. The students had become convinced during their military service that the war was lost: ""Hitler kann den Krieg nicht gewinnen, nur noch verlängern." – Hitler cannot win the war, he can only prolong it." They appealed to renounce "national socialist subhumanism", imperialism and Prussian militarism "for all time". The reader was urged to "Support the resistance movement!" in the struggle for "freedom of speech, freedom of religion and protection of the individual citizen from the arbitrary action of criminal dictator-states". These were the principles that would form "the foundations of a new Europe".


title: White Rose

text: By the end of January 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad ended with the capitulation and near-total loss of the Wehrmacht's Sixth Army. In Stalingrad, World War II had taken a decisive turn, inspiring resistance movements throughout the European countries then occupied by Germany. It also had a devastating effect on German morale. On 13 January 1943, a student riot broke out at Munich University after a speech by the Nazi Gauleiter of Munich and Upper Bavaria, in which he had denounced male students not serving in the army as skulkers and had also made obscene remarks to female students. These events encouraged the members of the White Rose. When the defeat at Stalingrad was officially announced, they sent out their sixth—and last—leaflet. The tone of this writing, authored by Kurt Huber and revised by Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell, was more patriotic. Headed "Fellow students!" (the now-iconic "Kommilitoninnen! Kommilitonen!"), it announced that the "day of reckoning" had come for "the most contemptible tyrant our people has ever endured." "The dead of Stalingrad adjure us!"


title: White Rose

text: On 3rd, 8th, and 15 February 1943, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl, and Willi Graf used tin stencils to write slogans like "Down with Hitler" and "Freedom" on the walls of the university and other buildings in Munich.


title: White Rose

text: On 18 February 1943, the Scholls brought a suitcase full of leaflets to the university main building. They hurriedly dropped stacks of copies in the empty corridors for students to find when they left the lecture rooms. Leaving before the lectures had ended, the Scholls noticed that there were some left-over copies in the suitcase and decided to distribute them. Sophie flung the last remaining leaflets from the top floor down into the atrium. This spontaneous action was observed by the university maintenance man, Jakob Schmid, who called the Gestapo. The university doors were locked, and the fate of brother and sister were sealed. Hans and Sophie Scholl were taken into Gestapo custody. A draft of a seventh pamphlet, written by Christoph Probst, was found in the possession of Hans Scholl at the time of his arrest by the Gestapo. While Sophie Scholl got rid of incriminating evidence before being taken into custody, Hans did try to destroy the draft of the last leaflet by tearing it apart and trying to swallow it. However, the Gestapo recovered enough of it and were able to match the handwriting with other writings from Probst, which they found when they searched Hans's apartment.


title: White Rose

text: Christoph was captured on February 20. The main Gestapo interrogator was Robert Mohr, who initially thought Sophie was innocent. However, after Hans had confessed, Sophie assumed full responsibility in an attempt to protect other members of the White Rose.


title: White Rose

text: The Scholls and Probst were scheduled to stand trial before the "Volksgerichtshof"—the Nazi "People's Court" infamous for its unfair political trials, which more often than not ended with a death sentence—on 22 February 1943. They were found guilty of treason. Roland Freisler, head judge of the court, sentenced them to death. The three were executed the same day by guillotine at Stadelheim Prison. Sophie went under the guillotine first, followed by Hans and then Christoph. While Sophie and Christoph were silent as they died, Hans yelled "es lebe die Freiheit!" (long live freedom) as the blade fell.


title: White Rose

text: Willi Graf had already been arrested on 18 February 1943; in his interrogations, which continued until his execution in October 1943, he successfully covered other members of the group. Alexander Schmorell was recognized, denounced and arrested on 24 February 1943, after his return to Munich following an unsuccessful effort to travel to Switzerland. Kurt Huber was taken into custody on 26 February, and only then did the Gestapo learn about his role within the White Rose group.


title: White Rose

text: The second White Rose trial took place on 19 April 1943. On trial were Hans Hirzel, Susanne Hirzel, Franz Josef Müller, Heinrich Guter, Eugen Grimminger, Otto Aicher, Theodor Haecker, Willi Graf, Anneliese Graf, Heinrich Bollinger, Helmut Bauer and Falk Harnack. At the last minute, the prosecutor added Traute Lafrenz, Gisela Schertling and Katharina Schüddekopf. Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, and Alexander Schmorell were sentenced to death. Eleven others were sentenced to prison, and Falk Harnack was acquitted of the accusations, which was unexpected, given that his brother and sister had been killed by the Nazis for subversive activities. Schmorell and Huber were executed on 13 July 1943. Willi Graf was kept in solitary confinement for about seven months. During that time, he was tortured in an attempt to make him give up other names of members of The White Rose. He never gave up any names, even when the Gestapo threatened to capture his family if he continued to withhold information. He was executed on October 12, 1943. On 29 January 1945, Hans Konrad Leipelt was executed. He had been sent down from Hamburg University in 1940 because of his Jewish ancestry, and had copied and further distributed the White Rose's pamphlets together with his girlfriend Marie-Luise Jahn. The pamphlets were now entitled ""And their spirit lives on.""


title: White Rose

text: The third White Rose trial was scheduled for 20 April 1943, Hitler's birthday, which was a public holiday in Nazi Germany. Judge Freisler had intended to issue death sentences against Wilhelm Geyer, Harald Dohrn, Josef Söhngen and Manfred Eickemeyer. Because he did not want to issue too many death sentences in a single trial, he therefore wanted to postpone his judgment against those four until the next day. However, the evidence against them was lost, and the trial finally took place on 13 July 1943. In that trial, Gisela Schertling—who had betrayed most of the friends, even fringe members like Gerhard Feuerle—changed her mind and recanted her testimony against all of them. Since Freisler did not preside over the third trial, the judge acquitted for lack of evidence all but Söhngen, who was sentenced to a six months' term in prison. After her acquittal on 19 April, Traute Lafrenz was placed under arrest again. She spent the last year of the war in prison. Trials kept being postponed and moved to different locations because of Allied air raids. Her trial was finally set for April 1945, after which she probably would have been executed. Three days before the trial, however, the Allies liberated the town where she was held prisoner, thereby saving her life.


title: White Rose

text: The hopes of the White Rose members that the defeat at Stalingrad would incite German opposition against the Nazi regime and the war effort did not come true. On the contrary, Nazi propaganda used the defeat to call on the German people to embrace "Total War". Coincidentally, on 18 February 1943, the same day that saw the arrests of Sophie and Hans Scholl and Willi Graf, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels delivered his Sportpalast speech, and he was enthusiastically applauded by his audience.


title: White Rose

text: Shortly after the arrest of the Scholl siblings and Christoph Probst, newspapers published all-points bulletins in search of Alexander Schmorell. On 22 February 1943, the students of Munich were assembled, and officially protested against the "traitors" who came from within their ranks. Gestapo and Nazi jurisdiction documented in their files their view of the White Rose members as "traitors and defeatists". On 23 February, the official newspaper of the Nazi party, "Völkischer Beobachter" and local newspapers in Munich briefly reported about the capture and execution of some "degenerate rogues". However, the network of friends and supporters proved to be too large, so that the rumors about the White Rose could not be suppressed any more by Nazi German officials. Further prosecutions took place until the end of World War II, and German newspapers continued to report, mostly in brief notes, that more people had been arrested and punished. On 15 March 1943, a report by the "Sicherheitsdienst" of the "Schutzstaffel" stated that rumors about the leaflets spread "considerable unrest" amongst the German population. The report expressed particular concern about the fact that leaflets were not handed in to the Nazi authorities by their finders as promptly as they used to be in the past.


title: White Rose

text: On 18 April 1943, "The New York Times" mentioned the student opposition in Munich. The paper also published articles on the first White Rose trials on 29 March 1943 and 25 April 1943. Though they did not correctly record all of the information about the resistance, the trials, and the execution, they were the first acknowledgement of the White Rose in the United States.


title: White Rose

text: On 27 June 1943, the German author and Nobel prize winner Thomas Mann, in his monthly anti-Nazi broadcasts by the BBC called ""Deutsche Hörer!"" ("German Listeners!") highly praised the White Rose members' courage. Soviet Army propaganda issued a leaflet, wrongly attributed by later researchers to the National Committee for a Free Germany, in honour of the White Rose's fight for freedom.


title: White Rose

text: The text of the sixth leaflet of the White Rose was smuggled out of Germany through Scandinavia to the United Kingdom by the German lawyer and member of the Kreisau Circle, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke. In July 1943, copies were dropped over Germany by Allied planes, retitled "The Manifesto of the Students of Munich". Thus, the activities of the White Rose became widely known in World War II Germany, but, like other attempts at resistance, did not succeed in provoking widespread active opposition against the totalitarian regime within the German population. However, it continued to be an important inspiration for acts of individual or small-scale resistance throughout the final years of the war.


title: White Rose

text: For many years the primary sources for research were limited to those provided by White Rose members and their supporters. These included Inge Scholl's 1952 commemorative book "The White Rose", surviving copies of the pamphlets, the letters and diaries of Sophie and Hans Scholl and Willi Graf, and other people with direct knowledge of the group's activities. With the end of communism in the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic in the early 1990s, the Gestapo interrogation protocols and other documents from Nazi authorities became publicly available. The interrogation protocols were part of the "Volksgerichtshof" documents, and were confiscated by the Soviet Red Army, and brought to Moscow. Here, they were kept secret in a special archive. After the foundation of the German Democratic Republic, the major part of the Nazi documents were handed over to the East German government, except the documents concerning Alexander Schmorell, who was born in Russia. The documents were distributed between the Central Archive of the communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany and the archive of the Ministry for State Security. With the German reunification, the documents were transferred to the Federal Archive of Germany in Berlin, and finally published. The documents concerning Alexander Schmorell still remain in the State Military Archive of Russia, but have been fully transcribed and published in a German/Russian edition.


title: White Rose

text: With the fall of Nazi Germany, the White Rose came to represent opposition to tyranny in the German psyche and was lauded for acting without interest in personal power or self-aggrandizement. Their story became so well known that the composer Carl Orff claimed (falsely by some accounts) to his Allied interrogators that he was a founding member of the White Rose and was released. He was personally acquainted with Huber, but there is no evidence that Orff was ever involved in the movement.


title: White Rose

text: The square where the central hall of Munich University is located has been named "Geschwister-Scholl-Platz" after Hans and Sophie Scholl; the square opposite to it is "Professor-Huber-Platz". Two large fountains are in front of the university, one on either side of Ludwigstraße. The fountain in front of the university is dedicated to Hans and Sophie Scholl. The other, across the street, is dedicated to Professor Huber. Many schools, streets, and other places across Germany are named in memory of the members of the White Rose.


title: White Rose

text: In Paris, a high school of the 17th arrondissement (collège La Rose Blanche), is named after the White Rose, and a public park pays homage to Hans and Sophie Scholl.


title: White Rose

text: One of Germany's leading literary prizes is called the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis (the "Scholl Siblings" prize). Likewise, the asteroid 7571 Weisse Rose is named after the group.


title: White Rose

text: The Audimax of the Bundeswehr Medical Academy in Munich was named after Hans Scholl in 2012. The Joint Medical Service of the Bundeswehr, named barracks north of Munich after Christoph Probst at his 100th birthday in 2019.


title: White Rose

text: As of 2022, there is only one surviving member of the group, Traute Lafrenz. She turned 100 years old on 3 May 2019 and was rewarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on that same date for her work as part of the White Rose.


title: White Rose

text: In 2021, a conspiracy theorist group known as the "White Rose" had appropriated the name of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance group to make an analogy between the original White Rose's non-violent resistance against Nazism and the non-violent supposed "resistance" by the conspiracy theorists against COVID-19 lockdowns and other measures by national governments intended to stop the virus during the COVID-19 pandemic in the early 2020s, which the conspiracy theorists falsely claim was the secret establishment of a worldwide totalitarian Nazi-style government. The methods of the White Rose conspiracy theorists are somewhat similar to the original White Rose anti-Nazi resisters in that the conspiracy theorists printed stickers asking for resistance against anti-Covid measures alongside the "White Rose" name with the address of their Telegram group, then posting the stickers in public places. The use of the internet means that the conspiracy theorists can spread their misinformation and gain members across the world unlike the original White Rose who were limited in both regards to Germany. Apart from the name, there is absolutely no connection between the original White Rose and the conspiracy theorists who took their name and neither the last surviving member Traute Lafrenz nor any relatives or decedents of deceased members have joined the conspiracy theorists or publicly commented on the appropriation of their name.


title: ZDF

text: ZDF (, short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; ; "Second German Television") is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all federal states of Germany ("Bundesländer"). ZDF is financed by television licence fees and advertising revenues.


title: ZDF

text: The broadcaster is well known for its famous programmes "heute", a newscast established in 1963, and "Wetten, dass..?," an entertainment show that premiered in 1981, with a suspension from 2014 to 2021. Norbert Himmler, ZDF's director general, was elected by the ZDF Television Council in 2021.


title: ZDF

text: In 1959, the government of Konrad Adenauer began preparations to form a second nationwide television network with the intention of competing with ARD. Adenauer perceived ARD's news coverage to be too critical of his government, and believed that two of the organizations primarily responsible for its news reporting – the "Deutsche Presse-Agentur" and "Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk", which produced the nightly "Tagesschau" – were too close to the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) to ever be able to report neutrally on his Christian Democratic Union government. The new television company, called the "Freies Fernsehen Gesellschaft" (Free Television Society) but derisively called "Adenauer-Fernsehen" by critics, was founded on 25 July 1960.


title: ZDF

text: The Deutsche Bundespost began constructing a second transmitter network on UHF channels, which required new reception equipment. For older receivers, a converter was sold for about 80 DM (). As with the earlier ARD television network, the location of the transmitters was carefully planned to ensure the entire country would be able to receive the programming.


title: ZDF

text: To test the transmitters and encourage the public to purchase UHF receivers, the federal government allowed the ARD network to create a temporary secondary channel, ARD 2, which was broadcast daily from 8 to 10 pm. ARD 2 began broadcasting on 1 May 1961 in the transmission area of Hessischer Rundfunk and a month later expanded nationwide.


title: ZDF

text: The SPD-led states of Hamburg, Bremen, Lower Saxony, and Hesse appealed to the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, which on 28 February 1961 in the "" blocked the plan. While building and maintaining telecommunications infrastructure, such as television transmitters, is a responsibility of the federal government under article 87f of the Basic Law, the constitution does not extend these duties to running a television or radio broadcaster. Under article 30, any power or duty not explicitly assigned to the federal government is reserved for the states. Therefore, the court ruled only the states had the right to set up a television broadcaster. (Conversely, the same decision supported new longwave broadcaster Deutschlandfunk, which had been established by the federal government in November 1960; its focus was on external broadcasting and therefore under the federal government's remit to conduct foreign relations.)


title: ZDF

text: After this decision, in March 1961, the states decided to establish a central nonprofit public television network independently of Adenauer's effort. On 6 June 1961, the state premiers signed at a premiers' conference in Stuttgart the interstate agreement on the "establishment of the public institution "Second German Television"". On 1 December 1961, though not all states had ratified the agreement, it went into force in the states that had done so (Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate). The last state, Bavaria, filed the instrument of ratification on 9 July 1962.


title: ZDF

text: The station began broadcasting from Eschborn near Frankfurt am Main on 1 April 1963, with a speech by the first director general (Intendant), Dr. Karl Holzamer. The channel broadcast its first programme in colour in 1967. In 1974, ZDF moved its base of operations to Mainz-Lerchenberg, after briefly being located in Wiesbaden. From 5 October 1996 ZDF broadcasts 24 hours a day.


title: ZDF

text: ZDF is financed by a license fee of €18.36 per month, which must be paid by all households in Germany, except handicapped people and persons on social aid. ZDF shares the income with ARD and Deutschlandradio. The fees are not collected directly by ZDF, but by the Beitragsservice, a common organization of the ARD member broadcasters, ZDF, and Deutschlandradio. ZDF also has income from sponsorships and programming and advertising sales.


title: ZDF

text: As ZDF is a channel, not a network, the channel is broadcast throughout Germany, with no regional variations or affiliates, using a number of signal repeaters. ZDF transmitters broadcast a digital signal. Analog signals were gradually phased out, a process which lasted from 2002 to 2008. ZDF does not run any transmitters itself. Throughout the analogue days, all ZDF transmitters were run by the Deutsche Bundespost which was later privatised as Deutsche Telekom's subsidiary T-Systems Media Broadcast. (This is in contrast to the other public German broadcaster, ARD, which owns its main transmitters.) ZDF was not previously allowed to use ARD's transmitters. ZDF has used both ARD and Telekom transmitters since changes to the law in the 1990s, and since the digital switchover.


title: ZDF

text: The first Europe-wide satellite broadcast via Astra 1C began in August 1993 during the Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin (IFA – "International Broadcasting Exhibition") in Berlin. In the same decade, these new technologies were used to enable digital broadcasting of ZDF. Today, ZDF is available free-to-air throughout Europe on Astra 19.2°E.


title: ZDF

text: ZDF operates two digital channels: ZDFneo (aimed at 18- to 45-year-olds) and ZDFinfo (documentaries). Both are transmitted in SD and HD. A commercial subsidiary called ZDF Enterprises GmbH manages programme sales, acquisitions, international coproductions, and a growing number of important activities in new media. ZDF Enterprises owns a Dutch TV production and distribution company Off the Fence. ZDF also operates various channels in cooperation with other networks: Arte, 3sat, KI.KA, and Phoenix.


title: ZDF

text: ZDF's animated station-identity mascots, the "Mainzelmännchen" (a play on the words "Mainz" and "Heinzelmännchen"), created by Wolf Gerlach for the channel's launch in 1963, quickly became popular and are still shown between commercials. In 1976, Otl Aicher, a graphic designer, created ZDF's corporate design. A new design for ZDF was created by Lee Hunt in February 2000.


title: ZDF

text: Administratively, ZDF is headed by a director general ("Intendant"), who is elected by the ZDF Television Council, the composition of which is in turn determined by "societally relevant groups" named in the ZDF Treaty.


title: ZDF

text: The supervising board supervises the work of the intendant. They pay special attention to the budget. The supervising board has 14 members:


title: ZDF

text: The Television Board supervises ZDF and authorizes the budget. They also elect the Director General. The board has 60 members:


title: ZDF

text: ZDF became a full member of the European Broadcasting Union in 1963. It also has numerous individual cooperation agreements with broadcasters around the world. ZDF is a supporter of the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV initiative which promotes the establishment of an open European standard for hybrid set-top boxes for the reception of broadcast TV and broadband multimedia applications with a single user interface.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: The Marine Raider Regiment (MRR), formerly known as the Marine Special Operations Regiment (MSOR). The Marine Raiders is a special operations force of the United States Marine Corps, which is a part of Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC). Renamed for its predecessor, the World War II Marine Raiders, this unit is the principal combat component of MARSOC, which is the Marine Corps' contribution to the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: Today's Raiders can trace their roots back to their World War II predecessors the Marine Raiders. The Marine Raiders were units established by the United States Marine Corps to conduct special amphibious light infantry warfare, particularly in landing in rubber boats and operating behind the lines. "Edson's" Raiders of 1st Marine Raiders Battalion and "Carlson's" Raiders of 2nd Marine Raiders Battalion are said to be the first United States special operations forces to form and see combat in World War II.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: Today's Marine Raiders first saw the light through a pilot program called the Marine Corps Special Operations Command Detachment One, also known as Det 1. In order to first assess the value of Marine special operations forces permanently detached to the United States Special Operations Command, a small unit of 86 men commanded by Col. Robert J. Coates, former commanding officer of 1st Force Reconnaissance Company, was activated on 19 June 2003 and had its headquarters at Camp Del Mar Boat Basin. In 2006 it was disbanded and succeeded by the permanent Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC). Det 1 deployed to Iraq with Navy SEALs from Naval Special Warfare Group 1 in 2004, Marines from the detachment took part in the Second Battle of Fallujah.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: In February 2006, the Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC) was created at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The 1st and 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalions were created along with the Marine Special Operations Advisor Group (MSOAG). The majority of the combat personnel assigned to the two battalions were drawn from the Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance community. In April 2009, the MSOAG was redesignated the Marine Special Operations Regiment which then built in a new level of command by making 1st and 2nd MSOB subordinate, and redesignated MSOAG's operational Marines the 3rd Marine Special Operations Battalion.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: The first deployment for Marine Raiders was in Afghanistan in 2007. This initial deployment was marked with controversy when elements from Fox Company, 2nd MSOB were involved in a shooting incident. The incident, that resulted in as many as 19 civilians killed, involved a complex ambush by insurgents that included a suicide VBIED and small arms fire. It was alleged that the MARSOC operators killed the civilians whilst attempting to suppress the enemy firing points. The Marines were relieved from their operational charter in the country and their commander removed from duty by an Army General from USSOCOM after claims were made that the Marines reacted inappropriately and caused excessive civilian casualties. The Marines were later found by a military tribunal to be cleared of wrongdoing. Shortly after a deal was struck to send 2nd MSOB to Helmand province in lieu of the eastern provinces; in late 2007, Golf Company 2nd MSOB was sent to Helmand Province in Support of NATO operations.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: In September 2009 the 1st MSOB returned to Afghanistan, this time in command of a joint special operations task force in the northwest of the country. On 10 November 2009, a Marine from 1st MSOB was awarded a Bronze Star with "V" device for his actions during a battle in Farah province. When the remote weapon on his vehicle was destroyed, he climbed on top to man its MK19 grenade launcher, according to his medal citation. As enemy rounds whipped by, Price stayed put—holding his position for four hours and killing "numerous" insurgents in the process.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: Following General Petraeus's take over of command in Afghanistan in 2010, in support of the ALP/VSO programme (Afghan Local Police/Village Stability Operations), SOF in Afghanistan were task-organized into battalion level SOTF (Special Operations Task Forces), each with a geographic area of responsibility; for MARSOC, this was western Afghanistan and Helmand Province. In March 2012, Marine Raiders suffered several casualties to Green on Blue attacks. On 29 July 2012, a patrol of Afghan Army Commandos was ambushed by insurgents from a number of buildings in Badghis Province, three Afghans were wounded by small arms fire, Gunnery Sergeants Jonathan Gifford of 2nd MSOB and Daniel Price of 1st MSOB raced forward on an ATV to retrieve the wounded under direct fire from the enemy. After evacuating the wounded to an emergency HLZ (Helicopter Landing Zone) from where they were safely medevaced, they returned to the firefight and assaulted the enemy positions in a fierce close-quarter battle. Whilst throwing grenades down the chimney of an insurgent-occupied building, they were struck and killed by PKM fire, for his actions that day Price was awarded the Silver Star.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: The Marine Raiders were deployed supporting the Global War on Terrorism in December 2013 alongside the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) where they conducted various special operations missions, ranging from direct action, reconnaissance and other mission sets.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: In 2014, it was announced that the Marine Special Operations Regiment and its subordinate units would be renamed Marine Raiders. However, due to administrative delays the renaming did not become official until 19 June 2015.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: A Raider from the 3rd Marine Raider Battalion was awarded the Silver Star for his actions during the terrorist attack, on Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali in November 2015. The Raider led a team that rescued nearly 150 people being held hostage by members of AQIM.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: "Marine Corps Times" reported that during Operation Inherent Resolve, Marine Raiders participated in the campaign to liberate Mosul in Iraq from ISIL. On 20 October 2016, after receiving small arms fire, a team of Raiders from the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion decided to occupy a point between two enemy controlled villages, later they were attacked by roughly 25 militants and an armored vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. A raider Staff Sergeant engaged and suppressed the dismounted enemy force with a sniper rifle, then exposed himself to enemy fire by climbing atop a vehicle to acquire an FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile and eventually destroyed the explosive-laden armored vehicle. For his actions during the engagement, the raider was awarded the Silver Star. On 30 December 2016, a Marine from the 2nd Raider Battalion was wounded as a result of enemy action in Iraq.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: "Marine Corps Times" reported that during 2017, Raiders assisted in liberating Marawi in Philippines from ISIS-P militants.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: In February 2019, "Marine Corps Times" reported that since the formation of MARSOC 13 years before, it had conducted 300 operational deployments across 13 countries, awarded more than 300 valor awards, and that 43 Raiders, including two multipurpose canines, had been killed in training and combat operations.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: A Marine Raider Master Sergeant from 2nd Marine Raider Battalion was awarded the Silver Star for his actions in a firefight whilst leading a joint US-Afghan team during a raid on a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan in 2019. Three other Raiders were awarded the Bronze Star for their actions during the firefight.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: The Marine Raider Regiment is made up of a Headquarters Company and three Marine Raider Battalions (MRB). Each MRB consists of four Marine Special Operations Companies (MSOC) and each company consists of four fourteen-man Marine Special Operations Teams (MSOT).


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: The base unit of the Raiders is the fourteen-man Marine Special Operations Team (MSOT). Each 14-man MSOT is organized into three elements: a Headquarters (HQ) and two identical Tactical Squads. The HQ element consists of a Special Operations Officer Team Leader (SOO/Captain), Team Chief (Master Sergeant CSO), Operations SNCO (Gunnery Sergeant CSO), and a communication SNCO. Each Tactical Element consists of an Element Leader (Staff Sergeant CSO), three Critical Skills Operators (Sergeant/Corporal CSOs), and a Navy Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsman (SARC). The organization allows a Team to operate on its own if needed but maintains the ability to operate as part of a bigger unit such as an MSOC or SOTF (Special Operations Task Force), similar to Army Special Forces ODA/B.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: Marine Raiders' mission is to provide tailored military combat skills and special operations capability to accomplish special operations missions assigned by the Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command (CDRUSSOCOM) and/or Geographic Combatant Commanders (GCCs) via the Theater Special Operations Command. Marines and Sailors of MARSOC also train, advise and assist friendly host nation forces – including naval and maritime military and paramilitary forces – to enable them to support their governments' internal security and stability, to counter subversion and to reduce the risk of violence from internal and external threats. Raiders' deployments are coordinated by MARSOC, through USSOCOM, in accordance with engagement priorities for Overseas Contingency Operations.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: Selection of the right personnel begins with a rigorous screening process designed to identify the right Marines for the right billet within MARSOC. Operational billets are open to men and women. Marines who want to serve as Marine Raiders must first attend Assessment and Selection (A&S). All Marines are screened to ensure that the Marines joining MARSOC meet the established prerequisites for duty within the command. The screening takes place in three stages: record screening, physical screening, and a psychological and medical evaluation.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: Once a Marine is qualified through the MARSOC Recruiter's screening process, he or she will be assigned to the Assessment and Selection (A&S) Program. A&S is mentally and physically challenging. The program is conducted three times a year at an undisclosed location following the three-week Assessment and Selection Preparatory and Orientation Course.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: The three-week A&S Phase 1 course serves as the precursor to the roughly three-week Assessment and Selection Course (A&S), and the nine-month Individual Training Course (ITC), with the purpose of preparing MARSOC Critical Skills Operator candidates for the challenges of A&S.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: Aside from the physical training, which includes running, swimming and hiking, the course incorporates a mix of classroom instruction and practical application of basic Marine Corps knowledge and MARSOC and Special Operations Forces fundamentals.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: A&S is a mentally and physically challenging evaluation that enables MARSOC to identify Marines that have attributes compatible with special operations missions and the MARSOC way of life. A&S is highly competitive. The program is conducted three times a year at an undisclosed location following the three-week Assessment and Selection Preparatory and Orientation Course.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: The Individual Training Course is a physically and mentally challenging nine-month course designed to produce Critical Skills Operators who can operate across the spectrum of special operations in small teams under spartan conditions. ITC uses a building block approach; the training rigor will systematically increase to mimic the complexity and stresses of combat. During ITC students are under constant observation from the instructor cadre as well as their peers. ITC is broken down into four training phases:


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: Phase 1 trains and evaluates students in the basic skill sets required of all Marine Raiders. Physical fitness, swimming and hand-to-hand combat are stressed in a PT program designed around endurance, functional fitness and amphibious training. This physical training program will continue throughout the course and has been designed to prepare the student for the unique demands of special operations. Field skills including: navigation; patrolling; Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE); and Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC). Mission planning, fire support training, and extensive communications round out the first phase.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: Phase 2 builds upon phase 1, the next phase teaches mission planning, fire support training, small boat operations and scout swimming, demolitions, photography and information collection/reporting and crew-served weapons. A 9-day exercise, "Operation Raider Spirit", is run to evaluate the candidates in patrolling and combat operations. Following on from this, students are taught Special Reconnaissance skills on a 3-week course. The end of phase 2 is an exercise, "Operation Stingray Fury", which tests the ITC students in urban and rural reconnaissance.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: Phase 3 focuses on close quarters combat (CQB) operations, phase 3 of the ITC trains the student to high degrees of proficiency in rifle and pistol marksmanship (Combat Marksmanship), CQB Tactics, Techniques and Procedures, demolitions and urban combat skill sets employed by a frontline Marine Special Operations Team (MSOT). Phase 3, which lasts 5 weeks, culminates in a series of simulated raids against urban and rural targets in an exercise named "Operation Guile Strike".


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: In the final phase, students will receive instruction on irregular warfare operations. The course culminates with "Operation Derna Bridge". Derna Bridge will require the student to use all of the skills mastered throughout the course while training, advising and operating with a Partner Nation/Irregular force. Newly graduated Marine Raiders will be assigned to one of the three Marine Raider Battalions.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: All Marine Raiders are required to undergo continual language training. However, based on ability, certain Marines will be selected for follow-on language training in an Advanced Linguistics Course.


title: Marine Raider Regiment

text: The training of Marine Raiders does not end with ITC. Marines will continue training at their assigned battalion for another 18 months. In addition, the MSOS offers advanced-level courses in a number of subject areas: special reconnaissance, close-quarters battle, sniper, breaching, and weapons employment.


title: Pandorum

text: Pandorum is a 2009 German/British science fiction horror film, with elements of Lovecraftian horror and survival adventure. The film was directed by Christian Alvart and produced by Robert Kulzer, Jeremy Bolt and Paul W. S. Anderson, the latter two through their Impact Pictures banner. Travis Milloy wrote the screenplay from a story by Milloy and Alvart. It stars Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster.


title: Pandorum

text: Filming began in Berlin in August 2008. "Pandorum" was released on 25 September 2009 in the United States, and on 2 October 2009 in the UK. The film's title is a fictional slang term for a form of psychosis called Orbital Dysfunctional Syndrome (ODS) caused by deep space and triggered by emotional stress. This leads to severe paranoia, delirium, and nosebleeding.


title: Pandorum

text: After human overpopulation depletes Earth's resources, humanity builds an interstellar ark, the "Elysium". It carries 60,000 people on a 123-year trip to colonize Tanis, an Earth-like planet. The passengers are placed in hypersleep, and a rotating crew wake biennially to maintain the ship. Eight years into the mission, the ship receives a transmission from Earth: "You're all that's left of us. Good luck, God bless, and godspeed."


title: Pandorum

text: Some unknown time later, two members of the flight crew, Corporal Bower and Lieutenant Payton, awaken. Improper emergence from the hibernatory state leaves them both with partial amnesia and possibly suffering from pandorum, a space-related disorder that causes psychosis when under emotional duress. The ship experiences power surges caused by an unstable nuclear reactor, and they are unable to enter the bridge. While Payton stays behind to access the ship's computer, Bower uses the ventilation system to search for the reactor.


title: Pandorum

text: Bower first finds a disemboweled body and a wounded mechanic who tells him to escape "them". The noise summons a group of cannibalistic humanoids who appear to respond mostly to sound. He continues on and encounters an environmental scientist, Nadia, and a farmer, Manh, who does not speak English; both are hostile. He encourages them to band together, and the trio flees into a barricaded chamber, where they find a cook named Leland. Leland has been awake for years, living off the water leaking into the ship, the algae it creates, and resorting to cannibalism. Payton encounters Corporal Gallo, who claims the ship is lost in space and that he killed his team in self-defense.


title: Pandorum

text: Leland feeds Bower's group and shows them mural drawings depicting what has happened: after Earth vanished following an unknown catastrophe, Gallo went insane, killed his crew, and induced pandorum in other passengers. After goading them into a violent and tribal culture, Gallo went back into hypersleep. Aided by accelerated evolution from an enzyme meant to help colonists adjust to life on Tanis, the descendants have turned into cannibalistic mutants. Leland gases the group, intending to eat them, but Bower convinces him the reactor must be stabilized.


title: Pandorum

text: As they search the ship for the reactor, Bower hopes to find his wife in an area for family in hypersleep but remembers that she died with everyone else on Earth when she refused to join him. This revelation almost makes him give up and pushes him closer to insanity. After surviving an encounter with the cannibals, Bower's group finds the reactor. A crowd of mutants sleep under the reactor, and Bower crosses a walkway to reset it. The walkway collapses, and Bower climbs down into the mutant pit to reach a ladder. While Manh distracts the mutants, Bower restarts the reactor, killing many mutants. Leland flees, and Manh is cornered by the mutant leader. Manh kills the leader but is killed by a mutant child he hesitates to slay.


title: Pandorum

text: Gallo becomes increasingly agitated, and Payton prepares a sedative. As they wrestle over the sedative, Gallo is revealed to be a hallucination as Payton IS Gallo. Gallo killed the real Payton long ago when he developed pandorum upon hearing Earth was gone. Because he went into Payton's pod, Gallo mistakenly believed himself to be Payton when he woke up with amnesia. Leland reaches the bridge, and Gallo kills him with the sedative. When Bower and Nadia confront him, Gallo opens the shutters on the bridge's windows, revealing that the ship is adrift in deep space with no stars visible. The shock pushes Bower further toward insanity. Taking advantage of Bower's mental state, Gallo argues they must maintain the violent society rather than revive civilization.


title: Pandorum

text: Nadia observes bioluminescent ocean life through the windows, and the computer displays that 923 years have elapsed since the mission launched. The ship reached Tanis 800 years ago and landed itself in the ocean. Bower hallucinates a mutant attack and breaks a window. As water pours into the ship, Nadia and Bower climb into a hypersleep pod and eject it. The flood triggers an emergency protocol which ejects the remaining 1,211 pods to the surface, while Gallo and the remaining mutants drown. Bower and Nadia surface near a lush coastline, and they witness the other pods ascend.


title: Pandorum

text: The film began life as a preliminary script written by Travis Milloy in the late 1990s. The story was originally set on a prison ship named "Pandorum", transporting thousands of Earth's deadliest prisoners to another planet; the cannibal hunters were the end result of the prisoners' degeneration. The characters played by Antje Traue and Cung Le were inmates. Ben Foster's character was a non-prisoner who did not trust anyone.


title: Pandorum

text: Believing no studio would want to make the film, Milloy thought about making it as a low-budget film shot on video in an abandoned paper mill with unknown actors. However, it attracted the attention of filmmaker Paul W. S. Anderson and Jeremy Bolt, and they gave it to Impact Pictures, who green-lit it. The producers gave the script to director Christian Alvart who was struck by the similarities to his own screenplay titled "No Where". His dramatic story was about four astronauts aboard a settlers' ship who suffer from amnesia. Alvart decided that they should meld the two screenplays together, and the producers and Milloy agreed. With the ship now changed to a settler's ship, the use of the word "Pandorum" was changed from the name of the ship to a type of mental illness caused by sustained deep space travel.


title: Pandorum

text: "Pandorum" was announced in May 2008 with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster in lead roles. Christian Alvart was attached to direct the film, based on a script by Travis Milloy. The movie was financed by Constantin Film through a joint venture deal with subsidiary Impact Pictures. The partnership helped fund the $40 million production. Constantin drew subsidies from Germany's Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) regional film fund, the (FFA) and the (DFFF). The German Federal Film Fund provided $6 million to the production, the fund's second-largest 2008 payout after $7.5 million for "Ninja Assassin". Filming took place at Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam, Germany in August 2008.


title: Pandorum

text: Summit Entertainment handled foreign sales and presented "Pandorum" to buyers at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, but due to a deal with Contender Films in the UK, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures took over and handled foreign sales to the film. Overture Films distributed "Pandorum" in North America, Icon in the United Kingdom and Australia, Svensk Filmindustri in Scandinavia, and Movie Eye in Japan. The film was set up as a possible franchise. According to Travis Milloy, it was to have a sequel and a prequel. If it performed well, Impact Pictures could green-light one or more sequels.


title: Pandorum

text: The DVD and Blu-ray Disc release occurred on 19 January 2010 in the United States over Anchor Bay Entertainment.


title: Pandorum

text: The director and producer commentaries on the DVD indicate that an unrated version of the movie exists but has not been released.


title: Pandorum

text: Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of based on reviews and an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "While it might prove somewhat satisfying for devout sci-fi fans, "Pandorum"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s bloated, derivative plot ultimately leaves it drifting in space." At Metacritic, which judges on a 0–100 scale, the film holds a "generally unfavorable" score of 28 based on 13 reviews.


title: Pandorum

text: Science fiction magazine "SFX" stated that ""Pandorum" is the finest interstellar horror in years" and awarded the film 4 stars out of 5. "Film Ireland" also gave "Pandorum" a positive review, appreciating the film's synergy of cinematic techniques, set design, and developed characters.


title: Pandorum

text: The film was a flop, grossing $20.6 million worldwide on a $33 million budget. It opened at No. 6 at the US box office with weekend receipts totaling $4.4 million. Overture Films declared bankruptcy the following year.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: Mothering Sunday is a 2021 British romantic drama film directed by Eva Husson, from a screenplay by Alice Birch, based on the novel of the same name by Graham Swift. The film stars Odessa Young, Josh O'Connor, Olivia Colman and Colin Firth. The film also marks the first appearance of Academy Award winner Glenda Jackson in a theatrical release in over thirty years, having last appeared in "King of the Wind" (1990).


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: Set in the wake of World War I, the film follows the life of Jane Fairchild (Young), an orphaned maid who spends Mothering Sunday with her wealthy lover.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: Jane Fairchild is a maid who works for the wealthy Niven family. On Mothering Sunday Jane is given the day off to spend as she likes. To her surprise Paul Sheringham, a wealthy neighbour, invites her over to spend the day with him while his parents, the Nivens, and the Hobdays have lunch together.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: Paul and Jane have been having a secret sexual affair for years, since Jane's arrival at the Nivens’s estate; however, Paul is due to marry Emma Hobday, a woman in his social circle who was once unofficially engaged to Paul's friend James Niven, who died in The Great War. Both Paul and Emma have mixed feelings about their engagement but feel compelled to marry nevertheless.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: At the Sheringham estate, Jane and Paul have sex before Paul leaves to join his family and fiancée for lunch. He leaves Jane alone at his estate and she wanders naked through the house examining how he lives before leaving.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: Later in her life Jane becomes a writer and marries Donald, a philosopher whom she meets while working at a book shop. He asks her how she became a writer and she lists her birth and the gift of a typewriter as two inciting incidents, keeping the third to herself.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: The third incident occurred on Mothering Sunday after Jane returned home. She runs into Godfrey Niven, who informs her that Paul died in a car crash. He asks Jane to accompany him to Paul's home, where Mr. Niven suspects there might have been a suicide note. Instead the maid there has already returned early and has cleaned up all traces of Paul and Jane's tryst.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: Later in their marriage Jane and Donald learn that Donald has cancer and is dying. He tells her that his death will perhaps fuel her to write her best work and laments the fact that he will be unable to read it. Before he dies Donald begs Jane to tell him about the third incident but she instead tells him she loves him.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: Years later when she is an old woman Jane is approached by members of the press after she wins a prestigious literary award. She is unimpressed as she has won numerous literary prizes.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: In June 2020, it was announced Odessa Young, Josh O'Connor, Olivia Colman and Colin Firth had joined the cast of the film, with Eva Husson directing from a screenplay by Alice Birch. In September 2020, Sope Dirisu joined the cast of the film, with Lionsgate set to distribute in the United Kingdom.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: Principal photography began in September 2020. In May 2021, it was reported that Glenda Jackson would appear in the film.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: "Mothering Sunday" had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on 9 July 2021. It will have its US premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival. It was scheduled to be released in the United States on 19 November 2021, but that date was changed and it opened on March 25, 2022.


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 77% based on 133 reviews, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's consensus reads, ""Mothering Sunday" works at a frustratingly chilly remove, but involving performances and solid overall craft mean it's rarely less than engaging." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 66 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Mothering Sunday (film)

text: At the 2021 Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival, it won the award for Outstanding Female-Led Feature.


title: Open world

text: In video games, an open world is a virtual world in which the player can approach objectives freely, as opposed to a world with more linear and structured gameplay. While games have used open-world designs since the 1980s, the implementation in "Grand Theft Auto III" (2001) set a standard for the concept which has been used since.


title: Open world

text: Games with open or free-roaming worlds typically lack level structures like walls and locked doors, or the invisible walls in more open areas that prevent the player from venturing beyond them; only at the bounds of an open-world game will players be limited by geographic features like vast oceans or impassable mountains. Players typically do not encounter loading screens common in linear level designs when moving about the game world, with the open-world game using strategic storage and memory techniques to load the game world in a dynamic and seamless manner. Open-world games still enforce many restrictions in the game environment, either because of absolute technical limitations or in-game limitations imposed by a game's linearity.


title: Open world

text: While the openness of the game world is an important facet to games featuring open worlds, the main draw of open-world games is about providing the player with autonomy – not so much the freedom to do anything they want in the game (which is nearly impossible with current computing technology), but the ability to choose how to approach the game and its challenges in the order and manner as the player desires while still constrained by gameplay rules. Examples of high level of autonomy in computer games can be found in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) or in single-player games adhering to the open-world concept such as the "Fallout" series. The main appeal of open-world gameplay is that it provides a simulated reality and allows players to develop their character and its behavior in the direction and pace of their own choosing. In these cases, there is often no concrete goal or end to the game, although there may be the main storyline, such as with games like "".


title: Open world

text: An open world is a level or game designed as nonlinear, open areas with many ways to reach an objective. Some games are designed with both traditional and open-world levels. An open world facilitates greater exploration than a series of smaller levels, or a level with more linear challenges. Reviewers have judged the quality of an open world based on whether there are interesting ways for the player to interact with the broader level when they ignore their main objective. Some games actually use real settings to model an open world, such as New York City.


title: Open world

text: A major design challenge is to balance the freedom of an open world with the structure of a dramatic storyline. Since players may perform actions that the game designer did not expect, the game's writers must find creative ways to impose a storyline on the player without interfering with their freedom. As such, games with open worlds will sometimes break the game's story into a series of missions, or have a much simpler storyline altogether. Other games instead offer side-missions to the player that do not disrupt the main storyline. Most open-world games make the character a blank slate that players can project their own thoughts onto, although several games such as "" offer more character development and dialogue. Writing in 2005, David Braben described the narrative structure of current video games as "little different to the stories of those Harold Lloyd films of the 1920s", and considered genuinely open-ended stories to be the "Holy Grail we are looking for in fifth generation gaming". Gameplay designer Manveer Heir, who worked on "Mass Effect 3" and "Mass Effect Andromeda" for Electronic Arts, said that there are difficulties in the design of an open-world game since it is difficult to predict how players will approach solving gameplay challenges offered by a design, in contrast to a linear progression, and needs to be a factor in the game's development from its onset. Heir opined that some of the critical failings of "Andromeda" were due to the open world being added late in development.


title: Open world

text: Some open-world games, to guide the player towards major story events, do not provide the world's entire map at the start of the game, but require the player to complete a task to obtain part of that map, often identifying missions and points of interest when they view the map. This has been derogatorily referred to as "Ubisoft towers", as this mechanic was promoted in Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed" series (the player climbing a large tower as to observe the landscape around it and identify waypoints nearby) and reused in other Ubisoft games, including "Far Cry", "" and "Watch Dogs". Other games that use this approach include "" and "". Rockstar games like "GTA IV" and the "Red Dead Redemption" series lock out sections of the map as "barricaded by law enforcement" until a specific point in the story has been reached.


title: Open world

text: Games with open worlds typically give players infinite lives or continues, although some force the player to start from the beginning should they die too many times. There is also a risk that players may get lost as they explore an open world; thus designers sometimes try to break the open world into manageable sections. The scope of open-world games requires the developer to fully detail every possible section of the world the player may be able to access, unless methods like procedural generation are used. The design process, due to its scale, may leave numerous game world glitches, bugs, incomplete sections, or other irregularities that players may find and potentially take advantage of. The term "open world jank" has been used to apply to games where the incorporation of the open world gameplay elements may be poor, incomplete, or unnecessary to the game itself such that these glitches and bugs become more apparent, though are generally not game-breaking, such as the case for "No Man's Sky" near its launch.


title: Open world

text: The mechanics of open-world games are often overlapped with ideas of sandbox games, but these are considered different terms. Whereas open world refers to the lack of limits for the player's exploration of the game's world, sandbox games are based on the ability of giving the player tools for creative freedom within the game to approach objectives, if such objectives are present. For example, "Microsoft Flight Simulator" is an open-world game as one can fly anywhere within the mapped world, but is not considered a sandbox game as there are few creative aspects brought into the game.


title: Open world

text: The combination of open world and sandbox mechanics can lead towards emergent gameplay, complex reactions that emerge (either expectedly or unexpectedly) from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics. According to Peter Molyneux, emergent gameplay appears wherever a game has a good simulation system that allows players to play in the world and have it respond realistically to their actions. It is what made "SimCity" and "The Sims" compelling to players. Similarly, being able to freely interact with the city's inhabitants in "Grand Theft Auto" added an extra dimension to the series.


title: Open world

text: In recent years game designers have attempted to encourage emergent play by providing players with tools to expand games through their own actions. Examples include in-game web browsers in "EVE Online" and "The Matrix Online"; XML integration tools and programming languages in "Second Life"; shifting exchange rates in "Entropia Universe"; and the complex object-and-grammar system used to solve puzzles in "Scribblenauts". Other examples of emergence include interactions between physics and artificial intelligence. One challenge that remains to be solved, however, is how to tell a compelling story using only emergent technology.


title: Open world

text: In an op-ed piece for BBC News, David Braben, co-creator of "Elite", called truly open-ended game design "The Holy Grail" of modern video gaming, citing games like "Elite" and the "Grand Theft Auto" series as early steps in that direction. Peter Molyneux has also stated that he believes emergence (or emergent gameplay) is where video game development is headed in the future. He has attempted to implement emergent gameplay to a great extent in some of his games, particularly "Black & White" and "Fable".


title: Open world

text: Procedural generation refers to content generated algorithmically rather than manually, and is often used to generate game levels and other content. While procedural generation does not guarantee that a game or sequence of levels is nonlinear, it is an important factor in reducing game development time and opens up avenues making it possible to generate larger and more or less unique seamless game worlds on the fly and using fewer resources. This kind of procedural generation is known as worldbuilding, in which general rules are used to construct a believable world.


title: Open world

text: Most 4X and roguelike games make use of procedural generation to some extent to generate game levels. SpeedTree is an example of a developer-oriented tool used in the development of "" and aimed at speeding up the level design process. Procedural generation also made it possible for the developers of "Elite", David Braben and Ian Bell, to fit the entire game—including thousands of planets, dozens of trade commodities, multiple ship types and a plausible economic system—into less than 22 kilobytes of memory. More recently, "No Man's Sky" procedurally generated over 18 quintillion planets including flora, fauna, and other features that can be researched and explored.


title: Open world

text: There is no consensus on what the earliest open-world game is, due to differing definitions of how large or open a world needs to be. "Inverse" provides some early examples games that established elements of the open world: "Jet Rocket", a 1970 Sega electro-mechanical arcade game that, while not a video game, predated the flight simulator genre to give the player free roaming capabilities, and "dnd", a 1975 text-based adventure game for the PLATO system that offered non-linear gameplay. "Ars Technica" traces the concept back to the free-roaming exploration of 1976 text adventure game "Colossal Cave Adventure", which inspired the free-roaming exploration of "Adventure" (1980), but notes that it was not until 1984 that what "we now know as open-world gaming" took on a "definite shape" with 1984 space simulator "Elite", considered a pioneer of the open world; Gamasutra argues that its open-ended sandbox style is rooted in flight simulators, such as SubLOGIC's "Flight Simulator" (1979/1980), noting most flight sims "offer a 'free flight' mode that allows players to simply pilot the aircraft and explore the virtual world". Others trace the concept back to 1981 CRPG "", which had a free-roaming overworld map inspired by tabletop RPG "Dungeons & Dragons". The overworld maps of the first five "Ultima" games, released up to 1988, lacked a single, unified scale, with towns and other places represented as icons; this style was adopted by the first three "Dragon Quest" games, released from 1986 to 1988 in Japan.


title: Open world

text: Early examples of open-world gameplay in adventure games include "The Portopia Serial Murder Case" (1983) and "The Lords of Midnight" (1984), with open-world elements also found in "The Hobbit" (1982) and "Valhalla" (1983). The strategy video game, "The Seven Cities of Gold" (1984), is also cited as an early open-world game, influencing "Sid Meier's Pirates!" (1987). Eurogamer also cites British computer games such as "Ant Attack" (1983) and "Sabre Wulf" (1984) as early examples.


title: Open world

text: According to "Game Informer"s Kyle Hilliard, "Hydlide" (1984) and "The Legend of Zelda" (1986) were among the first open-world games, along with "Ultima". IGN traces the roots of open-world game design to "The Legend of Zelda", which it argues is "the first really good game based on exploration", while noting that it was anticipated by "Hydlide", which it argues is "the first RPG that rewarded exploration". According to GameSpot, never "had a game so open-ended, nonlinear, and liberating been released for the mainstream market" with "The Legend of Zelda". According to "The Escapist", "The Legend of Zelda" was an early example of open-world, nonlinear gameplay, with an expansive and cohesive world, inspiring many games to adopt a similar open-world design.


title: Open world

text: "Mercenary" (1985) has been cited as the first open world 3D action-adventure game. There were also other open-world games in the 1980s, such as "Back to Skool" (1985), "Turbo Esprit" (1986) and "" (1985). "Wasteland", released in 1988, is also considered an open-world game. The early 1990s saw open-world games such as "The Terminator" (1990), "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1991), and "Hunter" (1991), which IGN describes as the first sandbox game to feature full 3D, third-person graphics, and Ars Technica argues "has one of the strongest claims to the title of "GTA" forebear". Sierra On-Line's 1992 adventure game "King's Quest VI" has an open world; almost half of the quests are optional, many have multiple solutions, and players can solve most in any order. Atari Jaguar launch title, Cybermorph (1993), was notable for its open 3D polygonal-world and non-linear gameplay. "Quarantine" (1994) is an example of an open-world driving game from this period, while "Iron Soldier" (1994) is an open-world mech game. The director of 1997's "Blade Runner" argues that that game was the first open world three-dimensional action adventure game.


title: Open world

text: IGN considers Nintendo's "Super Mario 64" (1996) revolutionary for its 3D open-ended free-roaming worlds, which had rarely been seen in 3D games before, along with its analog stick controls and camera control. Other 3D examples include "Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon" (1997), "" (1998), the DMA Design (Rockstar North) game "Body Harvest" (1998), the Angel Studios (Rockstar San Diego) games "Midtown Madness" (1999) and "" (2000), the Reflections Interactive (Ubisoft Reflections) game "Driver" (1999), and the Rareware games "Banjo-Kazooie" (1998), "Donkey Kong 64" (1999), and "Banjo-Tooie" (2000).


title: Open world

text: 1UP considers Sega's adventure "Shenmue" (1999) the originator of the "open city" subgenre, touted as a "FREE" ("Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment") game giving players the freedom to explore an expansive sandbox city with its own day-night cycles, changing weather, and fully voiced non-player characters going about their daily routines. The game's large interactive environments, wealth of options, level of detail and the scope of its urban sandbox exploration has been compared to later sandbox games like "Grand Theft Auto III" and its sequels, Sega's own "Yakuza" series, "Fallout 3", and "Deadly Premonition".


title: Open world

text: "Grand Theft Auto" has had over 200 million sales. Creative director Gary Penn, who previously worked on "", cited "Elite" as a key influence, calling it "basically "Elite" in a city", and mentioned other team members being influenced by "Syndicate" and "Mercenary". "Grand Theft Auto III" combined elements from previous games, and fused them together into a new immersive 3D experience that helped define open-world games for a new generation. Executive producer Sam Houser described it as ""Zelda" meets "Goodfellas"", while producer Dan Houser also cited "" and "Super Mario 64" as influences. Radio stations had been implemented earlier in games such as Maxis' "SimCopter" (1996), the ability to beat or kill non-player characters date back to titles such as "Portopia" (1983), and "Valhalla" (1983) and the way in which players run over pedestrians and get chased by police has been compared to "Pac-Man" (1980). After the release of "Grand Theft Auto III", many games which employed a 3D open world, such as Ubisoft's "Watch Dogs" and Deep Silver's "Saints Row" series, were labeled, often disparagingly, as "Grand Theft Auto" clones, much as how many early first-person shooters were called ""Doom" clones".


title: Open world

text: Other examples include "World of Warcraft", "The Elder Scrolls" and "Fallout" series of games, which feature a large and diverse world, offering tasks and possibilities to play.


title: Open world

text: In the "Assassin's Creed" series, which began in 2007, players explore historic open-world settings. These include the Holy Land during the Third Crusade in "Assassin's Creed", Renaissance Italy in "Assassin's Creed II" and "", Constantinople during the rise of the Ottoman Empire in "", New England during the American Revolution in "Assassin's Creed III", the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy in "", the North Atlantic during the French and Indian War in "Assassin's Creed Rogue", Paris during the French Revolution in "Assassin's Creed Unity", London at the onset of the Second Industrial Revolution in "Assassin's Creed Syndicate", Ptolemaic Egypt in "Assassin's Creed Origins", Classical Greece during the Peloponnesian War in "Assassin's Creed Odyssey", and Medieval England and Norway during the Viking Age in "Assassin's Creed Valhalla". The series intertwines factual history with a fictional storyline. In the fictional storyline, the Templars and the Assassins, two secret organisations inspired by their real-life counterparts, have been mortal enemies for all of known history. Their conflict stems from the Templars' desire to have peace through control, which directly contrasts the Assassins' wish for peace with free will. Their fighting influences much of history, as the sides often back real historical forces. For example, during the American Revolution depicted in "Assassin's Creed III", the Templars initially support the British, while the Assassins side with the American colonists.


title: Open world

text: "" was developed by GSC Game World in 2007, followed by two other games, a prequel and a sequel. The free world style of the zone was divided into huge maps, like sectors, and the player can go from one sector to another, depending on required quests or just by choice.


title: Open world

text: In 2011, Dan Ryckert of "Game Informer" wrote that open-world crime games were "a major force" in the gaming industry for the preceding decade.


title: Open world

text: Another popular open-world sandbox game is "Minecraft", which has since become the best-selling video game of all time, selling over 238 million copies worldwide on multiple platforms by April 2021. "Minecraft"s procedurally generated overworlds cover a virtual 3.6 billion square kilometers.