For the real second to last pick of my draft: Having friends of mine planted around me as
IM.
My second pick that's an element from German history, there seems to be something wrong with it. So, for those that aren't interested in it much and haven't seen The Lives of Others, a little explanation. After Germany was split up into sectors, a lot of people started fleeing the Soviet sector, in an attempt to get away from the communist and into the capitalist West. The border was shut down rather quickly, as the East was losing too many people. Fleeing the East then became a major pasttime of GDR citizens and the plans hatched to do so became more and more elaborate, as the border patrols became more careful. In attempt to counteract these activities, the secret police of the GDR, the Stasi, was told to stop conspiracies to flee the country, before they even happened. The Stasi used a lot of elaborate spying equipment, breaking into the houses of people and bugging them, but the most devious device of their's was the IM.
IMs or Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, were regular citizens of the GDR that agreed to spy on their friends, family and neighbours, in return of some favours. These included guarantees for places at the university for their children, a move up on the priority list for their car and so on. By the end of the eighties, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 174,000 people were registered as IMs, although many of the files were destroyed, making it impossible to tell how many IMs there really were. Some figures have them at 500,000, making it about 7% of the population.
You can imagine that such a great amount of people working for the Stasi made it practically impossible to trust people. For all you knew, it could be your elderly neighbour, watching your every move, or maybe that friendly guy you you've just met at work, it could be anybody.
On my island, the Thought Police has gotten hold of some of my closest friends and family and while they are not in the same predicament that I'm in, they do have enough incentive to betray me. I will think that I can trust these people, but I will be wrong and that realisation will be hammered home again and again, up until the point where for me, the possibility to connect with another human being will be totally lost.
So, next up is NoBonus, correct? PM sent, anyway.