S3 Plan

The S3 Plan (Selection for Societal Sanity, a.k.a. Solid Snake Simulation) was a program run by The Patriots in order to manipulate world events and craft the personalities of individuals. The S3 program was tested during the Big Shell Incident, on Raiden, unknowingly an agent of The Patriots.

The Big Shell Incident was, in fact, a recreation of the Shadow Moses Incident four years prior, in which Solid Snake had become a legend, being the "Big Boss" of his age. The Patriots had designed the Big Shell Incident into a recreation of Shadow Moses to mold Raiden as a perfect soldier. Revolver Ocelot had been misled by the Patriots into believing S3 stood for "Solid Snake Simulation" (although, given the fact that Ocelot was one of the founding members of The Patriots, he might have also lied about the true nature of the S3 Plan).

There were many similarities between the two events:


 * A "Snake" being in charge of the terrorists.


 * A "president" being held hostage.


 * Dead Cell standing in for FOXHOUND.


 * The appearance of a Cyborg Ninja.


 * The deaths of Richard Ames and James Johnson standing in for the deaths of Donald Anderson and Kenneth Baker.


 * The Harrier battle standing in for the Hind battle.


 * A mysterious codec call from a character named "Deepthroat."


 * A new type of Metal Gear.


 * A computer virus mimicking the effects of FOXDIE.


 * A threat of a nuclear strike.


 * Otacon wanting to rescue his stepsister Emma instead of Roy Campbell wanting to rescue his niece Meryl.


 * Revolver Ocelot was involved in both Incidents.


 * Revolver Ocelot calls Snake/Raiden "carrier-boy," if only sarcastically in Raiden's case.


 * The bodies in the corridor before Raiden first sees Vamp are similar to the one's killed by the Cyborg Ninja just before Snake fights him.


 * The helicopter Solidus shot down stands in for the two F16s Liquid shot down at Shadow Moses.


 * Gurlukovich Mercenaries standing in for the Genome Soldiers.


 * The ransom for 30 billion stands in for the ransom for 1 billion and Big Boss corpse at Shadow Moses.


 * Both incidents happened on islands.
 * Snake/Raiden needing the help of a scientist that works at the facility, with Emma Emmerich filling in for Otacon


 * Gurlukovich Mercenaries were involved in both incidents.


 * Solid Snake was involved in both incidents (although his involvement in the Big Shell incident was not planned).


 * Sons of Liberty faction stands in for the Sons of Big Boss faction.
 * In both incidents a seconed force was sent to distract the enemy F16`s and SEAL Team 10 so Snake/Raiden can infiltrate the enemy.

However, after Arsenal Gear crashed into Manhattan, an AI (possibly JD, The Patriots head AI), contacted Raiden through his Codec and explained that Ocelot was wrong. S3 actually stood for Selection for Societal Sanity. By manipulating the information that surrounded the incident, The Patriots had proved that they could manipulate world events. Using the data they collected from this exercise, their AIs would be improved even more. It is unknown if any of the test information from the Big Shell/S3 test actually survived the crash, being that Arsenal's AI, GW, had to have direct access to the World Wide Web to be able to change the information that was being presented to the subjects in order to manipulate events. It is also unclear if Emma's virus, after being successfully installed into GW, had any effect on the test data, although it did delete the information about the Wisemen's committee (the 12 people that supposedly made up The Patriots), leaving only their names.

Aftermath
As a direct result of the S3 Plan, the Patriots AIs had begun to start to try and control people by the civilian level. They also created through AT Corps the SOP system, the War Economy, thus perfecting what they would see as absolute control over Warfare during their dominion until their demise via deletion by FOXALIVE.

Trivia
During Operation Peace Walker, the true outline of the Peace Walker project had notable similarities to the S3 Plan.