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 the decisions 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 as they considered it the ultimate exercise for the S3-system. Revolver Ocelot had been misled by the Patriots into believing S3 stood for "Solid Snake Simulation" and was a system capable of equipping every soldier with combat abilities equal to those of Solid Snake (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, both planned and coincidental:


 * A "Snake" being in charge of the terrorists, and another Snake being sent in to stop them (though the second Snake was quickly renamed Raiden).
 * A "president" being held hostage.
 * The Sons of Liberty terrorists stood in for the Sons of Big Boss, with Dead Cell representing FOXHOUND, and the Gurlukovich Mercenaries representing the Genome Soldiers.
 * 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, respectively.
 * In both incidents, a second force was deployed as a diversion (the U.S. Air Force and SEAL Team 10) so that the operative could infiltrate the enemy facility more easily.
 * Solidus shooting down the two SEAL Sikorsky Sea Stallions in a similar fashion to Liquid shooting down the F-16 Fighting Falcons.
 * In both incidents, the operative made his way into the facility by swimming (Solid Snake / Iroquois Pliskin even did twice).
 * In both incidents there was a need to use a Nikita to destroy a a high voltage circuit panel to reach a new location.
 * In both incidents there was a third party who have a agent in the enemy base with Ocelot as the agent at Shadow Moses and Fatman and Ocelot again during the Big Shell Incident.
 * The Harrier battle standing in for the Hind battle.
 * A mysterious Codec call from a character named "Deepthroat."
 * A new type of Metal Gear and a threat of a nuclear strike.
 * The (fake) ransom for $30 billion stands in for the ransom for $1 billion and Big Boss's body at Shadow Moses.
 * Emma's computer virus mimicking the effects of FOXDIE.
 * Richard Ames was involved in both incidents. (Though not seen at Shadow Moses)
 * Otacon wanting to rescue his stepsister Emma instead of Roy Campbell wanting to rescue his niece/daughter Meryl Silverburgh.
 * 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.
 * Both incidents happened on areas in the middle of the ocean.
 * Snake/Raiden needing the help of a scientist that works at the facility, with Emma 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).
 * Johnny Sasaki was involved in both situations (although this may be the one similarity that is purely coincidental).
 * In both incidents, a member of the support team who has been impersonated by the enemy, reveals their true identites near the end of the operations.
 * In both incidents, there was a threat of the bases being destroyed (Shadow Moses was not destroyed while the Big Shell was).
 * In both incidents, Raiden/Snake needed a Card Key to open higher level doors, in order to progress the story.
 * In both incidents, a member of the support team was blackmailed with the threat of someone close to them being killed and ending up betraying their friends in the process Roy Campbell and Olga Gurlukovich respectively.
 * In both incidents there was more to the locations then meets the eye as Shadow Moses Island was to test Metal Gear REX while the Big Shell was to cover up the construction for Arsenal Gear and for the S3 Plan itself.
 * Near the end of both incidents, the operative needed to fight Metal Gear(s) with a stinger missile launcher.
 * Near the end of both incidents, the terrorist leader knocks out the operative and when they wake up the terrorist leader releases them and fights them equally.
 * In both incidents the Cyborg Ninja saves the operative from being killed by Metal Gears and in turn is killed by the terrorist leader.
 * Liquid Snake was involved in "both" incidents in some way.
 * Solidus Snake was involved in both incidents.
 * Roy Campbell was involved in "both" incidents.
 * The terrorist leaders of both incidents tried to revie Big Boss's dream of Outer Heaven.
 * In both incidents a virus had two purposes when FOXDIE was to kill the Sons of Big Boss and Solid Snake while Emma's worm clustor was to stop Arsenal Gear and simulate FOXDIE's effects.

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. However, the master AI when contacting Raiden revealed that it did survive the crash. 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, and the master AI also implied that at least most of the data for the excercise was unaffected by Emma's worm cluster.

Aftermath
As a direct result of the S3 Plan, the Patriots AIs had begun to start to try and control people on the civilian level. They also created through AT Corps the SOP system and 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 the Peace Walker Incident, the true outline of the Peace Walker project had notable similarities to the S3 Plan.