title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: Some reactor building designs, for example, the EPR, incorporate dedicated corium spread areas (core catchers), where the melt can deposit without coming in contact with water and without excessive reaction with concrete.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: Only later, when a crust is formed on the melt, limited amounts of water can be introduced to cool the mass.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: Materials based on titanium dioxide and neodymium(III) oxide seem to be more resistant to corium than concrete.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: Deposition of corium on the containment vessel inner surface, e.g. by high-pressure ejection from the reactor pressure vessel, can cause containment failure by direct containment heating (DCH).


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: During the Three Mile Island accident, a slow partial meltdown of the reactor core occurred. About of material melted and relocated in about 2 minutes, approximately 224 minutes after the reactor scram. A pool of corium formed at the bottom of the reactor vessel, but the reactor vessel was not breached. The layer of solidified corium ranged in thickness from 5 to 45 cm.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: Samples were obtained from the reactor. Two masses of corium were found, one within the fuel assembly, one on the lower head of the reactor vessel. The samples were generally dull grey, with some yellow areas.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: The mass was found to be homogeneous, primarily composed of molten fuel and cladding. The elemental constitution was about 70 wt.% uranium, 13.75 wt.% zirconium, 13 wt.% oxygen, with the balance being stainless steel and Inconel incorporated into the melt; the loose debris showed somewhat lower content of uranium (about 65 wt.%) and higher content of structural metals. The decay heat of corium at 224 minutes after scram was estimated to be 0.13 W/g, falling to 0.096 W/g at scram+600 minutes. Noble gases, caesium and iodine were absent, signifying their volatilization from the hot material. The samples were fully oxidized, signifying the presence of sufficient amounts of steam to oxidize all available zirconium.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: Some samples contained a small amount of metallic melt (less than 0.5%), composed of silver and indium (from the control rods). A secondary phase composed of chromium(III) oxide was found in one of the samples. Some metallic inclusions contained silver but not indium, suggesting a sufficiently high temperature to cause volatilization of both cadmium and indium. Almost all metallic components, with the exception of silver, were fully oxidized; even silver was oxidized in some regions. The inclusion of iron and chromium rich regions probably originate from a molten nozzle that did not have enough time to be distributed through the melt.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: The bulk density of the samples varied between 7.45 and 9.4 g/cm (the densities of UO and ZrO are 10.4 and 5.6 g/cm). The porosity of samples varied between 5.7% and 32%, averaging at 18±11%. Striated interconnected porosity was found in some samples, suggesting the corium was liquid for a sufficient time for formation of bubbles of steam or vaporized structural materials and their transport through the melt. A well-mixed (U,Zr)O solid solution indicates peak temperature of the melt between .


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: The microstructure of the solidified material shows two phases: (U,Zr)O and (Zr,U)O. The zirconium-rich phase was found around the pores and on the grain boundaries and contains some iron and chromium in the form of oxides. This phase segregation suggests slow gradual cooling instead of fast quenching, estimated by the phase separation type to be between 3–72 hours.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: The largest known amounts of corium were formed during the Chernobyl disaster. The molten mass of reactor core dripped under the reactor vessel and now is solidified in forms of stalactites, stalagmites, and lava flows; the best-known formation is the "Elephant's Foot," located under the bottom of the reactor in a Steam Distribution Corridor.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: The Chernobyl corium is composed of the reactor uranium dioxide fuel, its zircaloy cladding, molten concrete, and decomposed and molten serpentinite packed around the reactor as its thermal insulation. Analysis has shown that the corium was heated to at most , and remained above for at least 4 days.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: The molten corium settled in the bottom of the reactor shaft, forming a layer of graphite debris on its top. Eight days after the meltdown the melt penetrated the lower biological shield and spread on the reactor room floor, releasing radionuclides. Further radioactivity was released when the melt came in contact with water.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: Three different lavas are present in the basement of the reactor building: black, brown and a porous ceramic. They are silicate glasses with inclusions of other materials present within them. The porous lava is brown lava that had dropped into water thus being cooled rapidly.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: During radiolysis of the Pressure Suppression Pool water below the Chernobyl reactor, hydrogen peroxide was formed. The hypothesis that the pool water was partially converted to HO is confirmed by the identification of the white crystalline minerals studtite and metastudtite in the Chernobyl lavas, the only minerals that contain peroxide.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: The coriums consist of a highly heterogeneous silicate glass matrix with inclusions. Distinct phases are present:


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: The molten reactor core accumulated in room 305/2, until it reached the edges of the steam relief valves; then it migrated downward to the Steam Distribution Corridor. It also broke or burned through into room 304/3. The corium flowed from the reactor in three streams. Stream 1 was composed of brown lava and molten steel; steel formed a layer on the floor of the Steam Distribution Corridor, on the Level +6, with brown corium on its top. From this area, brown corium flowed through the Steam Distribution Channels into the Pressure Suppression Pools on the Level +3 and Level 0, forming porous and slag-like formations there. Stream 2 was composed of black lava, and entered the other side of the Steam Distribution Corridor. Stream 3, also composed of black lavas, flowed to other areas under the reactor. The well-known "Elephant's Foot" structure is composed of two metric tons of black lava, forming a multilayered structure similar to tree bark. It is said to be melted deep into the concrete. The material is dangerously radioactive and hard and strong, and using remote controlled systems was not possible due to high radiation interfering with electronics.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: The Chernobyl melt was a silicate melt that contained inclusions of Zr/U phases, molten steel and high levels of uranium zirconium silicate ("chernobylite", a black and yellow technogenic mineral). The lava flow consists of more than one type of material—a brown lava and a porous ceramic material have been found. The uranium to zirconium ratio in different parts of the solid differs a lot, in the brown lava a uranium-rich phase with a U:Zr ratio of 19:3 to about 19:5 is found. The uranium-poor phase in the brown lava has a U:Zr ratio of about 1:10. It is possible from the examination of the Zr/U phases to determine the thermal history of the mixture. It can be shown that before the explosion, in part of the core the temperature was higher than 2,000 °C, while in some areas the temperature was over .


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: The corium undergoes degradation. The Elephant's Foot, hard and strong shortly after its formation, is now cracked enough that a cotton ball treated with glue can easily remove its top 1- to 2-centimeter layer. The structure's shape itself is changed as the material slides down and settles. The corium temperature is now just slightly different from ambient. The material is therefore subject to both day–night temperature cycling and weathering by water. The heterogeneous nature of corium and different thermal expansion coefficients of the components causes material deterioration with thermal cycling. Large amounts of residual stresses were introduced during solidification due to the uncontrolled cooling rate. The water, seeping into pores and microcracks, has frozen there. This is the same process that creates potholes on roads, accelerates cracking.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: Corium (and also highly irradiated uranium fuel) has the property of spontaneous dust generation, or spontaneous self-sputtering of the surface. The alpha decay of isotopes inside the glassy structure causes Coulomb explosions, degrading the material and releasing submicron particles from its surface. The level of radioactivity is such that during 100 years, the lava's self irradiation ( α decays per gram and 2 to of β or γ) will fall short of the level required to greatly change the properties of glass (10 α decays per gram and 10 to 10 Gy of β or γ). Also the lava's rate of dissolution in water is very low (10 g·cm·day), suggesting that the lava is unlikely to dissolve in water.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: It is unclear how long the ceramic form will retard the release of radioactivity. From 1997 to 2002, a series of papers were published that suggested that the self irradiation of the lava would convert all 1,200 tons into a submicrometre and mobile powder within a few weeks. But it has been reported that it is likely that the degradation of the lava is to be a slow and gradual process rather than a sudden rapid process. The same paper states that the loss of uranium from the wrecked reactor is only per year. This low rate of uranium leaching suggests that the lava is resisting its environment. The paper also states that when the shelter is improved, the leaching rate of the lava will decrease.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: Some of the surfaces of the lava flows have started to show new uranium minerals such as UO·2HO (eliantinite), (UO)O·4HO (studtite), uranyl carbonate (rutherfordine), čejkaite (), and the unnamed compound NaU(CO)·2HO. These are soluble in water, allowing mobilization and transport of uranium. They look like whitish yellow patches on the surface of the solidified corium. These secondary minerals show several hundred times lower concentration of plutonium and several times higher concentration of uranium than the lava itself.


title: Corium (nuclear reactor)

text: The March 11, 2011, Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami caused various nuclear accidents, the worst of which was the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. At an estimated eighty minutes after the tsunami strike, the temperatures inside Unit 1 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant reached over 2,300 ˚C, causing the fuel assembly structures, control rods and nuclear fuel to melt and form corium. (The physical nature of the damaged fuel has not been fully determined but it is assumed to have become molten.) The reactor core isolation cooling system (RCIC) was successfully activated for Unit 3; the Unit 3 RCIC subsequently failed, however, and at about 09:00 on March 13, the nuclear fuel had melted into corium. Unit 2 retained RCIC functions slightly longer and corium is not believed to have started to pool on the reactor floor until around 18:00 on March 14. TEPCO believes the fuel assembly fell out of the pressure vessel to the floor of the primary containment vessel, and that it has found fuel debris on the floor of the primary containment vessel.


title: Spencer Paysinger

text: Spencer Paysinger (born June 28, 1988) is a former American football linebacker. He was signed by the New York Giants as an undrafted free agent in 2011. He played until 2017, and in 2018 became a co-producer and actor on the television series "All American", based on the story of his life.


title: Spencer Paysinger

text: Spencer Paysinger grew up in South Los Angeles, and attended Beverly Hills High School.  He then was made the captain of the football team as a linebacker. He played college football at Oregon. In his last year playing as a senior on the team, Paysinger was the captain and team leader.


title: Spencer Paysinger

text: His uncle, Carter Paysinger, was the head football coach at BHHS from 1990 to 2009. His father, Donald Paysinger, worked with BHHS as an assistant or head coach for nearly 32 years until 2013.


title: Spencer Paysinger

text: After not getting selected in the 2011 NFL Draft, Paysinger signed with the New York Giants as an undrafted free agent. As a rookie Paysinger did not get much playing time. In 15 games he racked up 12 tackles. He was a part of the Super Bowl XLVI winning team. In the next three seasons with the New York Giants, he racked up 104 tackles in 47 games. In the 2014 season he was able to get to the quarterback for the first time mustering up his first and only NFL career sack.


title: Spencer Paysinger

text: Paysinger signed a one-year contract with the Miami Dolphins on April 2, 2015. He was re-signed by the Dolphins on March 31, 2016. In these two seasons with the Miami Dolphins Paysinger went for a total of 57 tackles.


title: Spencer Paysinger

text: On June 9, 2017, Paysinger was signed by the New York Jets. Before he could get any playing time with the team in the regular season, he was released on September 1, 2017.


title: Spencer Paysinger

text: On December 5, 2017, Paysinger signed with the Carolina Panthers. He played in three games, before being released by the team on December 29, 2017. He then retired from football.


title: Spencer Paysinger

text: Paysingers's life and career served as inspiration for the 2018 The CW series "All American" where he is a consulting producer and has a minor role as assistant football coach at Beverly Hills High. Paysinger said of the show “It’s immensely important. I know it’s a CW drama, but for the bones of it to center on football, that is something that I take pride in.”


title: Spencer Paysinger

text: The series "All American" has gained a massive following in America. It is available for stream on Netflix ; HBO MAX.


title: Spencer Paysinger

text: At the beginning of each episode it states that the show was inspired by true events and hence Paysinger's life but the show takes creative control and while the main story is based on Paysinger's life the actual details are tweaked.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Left 4 Dead 2 is a 2009 first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve. The sequel to Turtle Rock Studios's "Left 4 Dead" (2008) and the second game in the "Left 4 Dead" series, it was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 in November 2009, Mac OS X in October 2010, and Linux in July 2013.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "Left 4 Dead 2" builds upon cooperatively focused gameplay and Valve's proprietary Source engine, the same game engine used in the original "Left 4 Dead". Set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, the game focuses on four new Survivors, fighting against hordes of zombies known as the Infected, who develop severe psychosis and act extremely aggressive. The Survivors must fight their way through five campaigns, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of escape at each campaign's finale. The gameplay is procedurally altered by the "AI Director 2.0", which monitors the players' performance and adjusts the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Other new features include new types of special infected and an arsenal of melee weapons.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: The game made its world premiere at E3 2009 with a trailer during the Microsoft press event. Prior to release, it received mixed critical and community reactions, and attracted an unusually high volume of controversy about its graphic content. In response, alterations were made to the cover art, but both Australia and Germany refused to rate the unmodified edition at the time of release. Despite this, the game was met with positive critical reviews, and is considered to be one of the greatest video games ever made.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Like its predecessor, "Left 4 Dead 2" is a first-person shooter with a heavy emphasis on cooperative gameplay. The game presents five new campaigns, each composed of three to five smaller levels. As in the first game, each campaign is presented in menus and loading screens as a film starring the four Survivors; and features, upon completing a campaign, a faux credits screen which acts as the final scoreboard for the players and recaps certain performance statistics for the group. In every campaign, most levels involve the Survivors attempting to reach a safe zone and close the door once they are all safely inside. However, the final level in each campaign requires the Survivors to call for rescue and either survive a prolonged onslaught until rescue arrives, pass through an especially challenging gauntlet of Infected to reach an escape vehicle, or (in "Dead Center" and "The Passing") collect and utilize fuel cans to enable their escape.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Each Survivor can carry one each of five categories of equipment: primary weapons, secondary weapons, throwable weapons, major medical supplies (which also includes ammunition upgrades) and minor medical supplies. Primary weapons are broken down into four tiers based on their availability and attributes. Tier one weapons (such as the "SMG" and "Chrome Shotgun") deal damage relatively slowly and serve as basic offensive weapons. Tier two weapons (such as the "Assault Rifle" and "Combat Shotgun") deal damage faster and often appear in later maps of each chapter. The two tier three weapons ("Grenade Launcher" and "M60") differ from tier one and two weapons both because of their rarity and because players cannot refill their ammunition from ammunition dumps. They deal damage quickly at the cost of limited ammo. Tier four weapons are all mounted weapon systems and carry unlimited ammunition. The mounted weapons deal damage the fastest, but at the cost of overheating after a period of non-stop use, being stuck in place, and not being able to defend from behind. The mounted weapons are in set positions in maps and have a fixed arc of fire. They cannot be given ammunition upgrades like other weapons and players cannot utilize the laser sights attachment with them. There are three types of secondary weapons available: melee weapons, small caliber pistols (that can be dual wielded) and large caliber pistols. Although melee weapons cause extra damage to Infected when struck, the Survivors can use any other weapon or item for weaker melee attacks that can push the Infected back. Players also carry a flashlight with infinite battery life, the use of which enables players to see in the dark (with the downside of the player gaining the attention of the Infected much faster). They may also carry a single first aid kit, special ammo pack, or a defibrillator in their major medical supply slot; in addition to either pain pills or an adrenaline shot in their minor medical supply slot. They may also carry a single throwable weapon—Molotov cocktails to set an area on fire; pipe bombs to attract any nearby Infected to the flashing light and sound it makes until it explodes; and jars of Boomer bile, which attracts Common Infected to whatever it hits (e.g. fires, Special Infected, each other).


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: To enable situational awareness of other Survivors, players are shown the health and status of their fellow survivors. If a player does not have direct sight of another Survivor (e.g. a wall is blocking their view of the others), they will be shown the Survivor's highlighted silhouette. The Survivors are also susceptible to friendly fire, forcing players to exercise caution when shooting or swinging their weapons. As Survivors take damage, they move more slowly; if a Survivor's health drops to zero, they are incapacitated and left to fight off the Infected using a handgun until rescued by another Survivor. If a Survivor dies, they remain dead until the next level, unless revived by a defibrillator, or, in Campaign or Singleplayer mode, reappear in a "Rescue Closet" to be freed by other Survivors. Should all Survivors die or be incapacitated, the game will end, at which point the players may restart that chapter or quit the game.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "Left 4 Dead 2" also features a Realism mode, which can be enabled at any difficulty for either Campaign or Versus. This mode removes some of the video-game aspects from the gameplay: Survivors cannot see each other's silhouettes, and dead teammates can only be revived with defibrillators and will not respawn later in the level. Weapons and other items will only glow when the player is within a few feet, forcing the players to search the levels more thoroughly. Headshots to enemies deal more damage, whereas limb or body shots require more shots. In addition, the Witch enemy can kill any Survivor she would have normally incapacitated (on difficulties other than Easy). Designed to force players to work closely together and rely on voice communication, Valve created Realism mode to give players a way "to be challenged as a team" without having to increase the difficulty level of the game.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Finally, in later versions of the game, there is a Mutation option, in which players can select from a menu of 30 variations, some singleplayer, some multiplayer (and some of the latter cooperative, some versus, or both). Each variation changes one or more major game dynamics, such as: constantly draining health, solo mode with no Survivor allies, death upon incapacitation, only one kind of weapon available, coop that later switches to versus, shooting or targeting constraints, an enemy type with increased power, increased numbers of Special Infected, etc. One of these modes, named GunBrain, is a weapons stats analyzer.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: While also referred to as zombies, the Infected are humans who have contracted a mutated strain of an infection, though neither the source nor nature of this "Green Flu" are made clear in the games. The most numerous Infected encountered by the survivors are the common Infected. Though individually weak, they can swarm and overwhelm the Survivors, especially when separated from their teammates. Damage to the infected in "Left 4 Dead 2" is portrayed more realistically, with bullets and melee weapons ripping off bits of flesh and, in some cases, limbs. A new addition to "Left 4 Dead 2" is the Uncommon Infected unique to each campaign. By virtue of location and equipment worn pre-infection, they possess abilities that separate them from the Common Infected. For example, the "Dead Center" campaign introduces infected CEDA agents in hazmat suits, making them fireproof; "Dark Carnival" includes clowns, whose squeaking shoes attract small hordes of Common Infected; and "The Parish" includes infected private security contractors in riot gear, making them bulletproof from the front.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: As in the first game, there are special Infected whose mutations grant them special abilities that make them highly dangerous, which act as bosses. The presence of such Infected nearby is hinted at by sound effects or musical cues unique to each type. The five Special Infected from the first game return in "Left 4 Dead 2", some with modified behavior and skin models:


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: As in the first game, an artificial intelligence system called the AI Director drives gameplay by procedurally spawning enemies, weapons and items based on players' performance during any given campaign. In "Left 4 Dead 2", the Director has been improved to encourage more participation by players, forcing players through difficult gauntlets to reach safety. It also has the ability to alter elements of the level, such as placement of walls, level layout, lighting, and weather conditions, making each play session unique. The Director now rewards players for taking longer or more difficult paths through each episode by providing useful equipment, such as special ammo packs or higher tier weapons, along these riskier paths.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Like its predecessor, "Left 4 Dead 2" is set in the aftermath of a worldwide pandemic of a disease nicknamed the "Green Flu", which rapidly transforms humans into zombie-like creatures and mutated forms that demonstrate extreme aggression towards non-infected beings. A few humans are immune to the disease, while some of those who are infected have no symptoms. The Civil Emergency and Defense Agency (CEDA) and the U.S. military create safe zones to attempt to evacuate as many survivors as possible. "Left 4 Dead 2" introduces four new survivors: Coach, Ellis, Nick, and Rochelle, who are immune to the disease and have individual backstories that are provided through character dialogue. While the game is intended as a continuation of the original, occurring one week after the first game begins, Valve decided to create a new group of survivors due to the change in location. Like the first game, the five campaigns in "Left 4 Dead 2" take place across a story arc. Set in the Deep South, the story begins in Savannah, Georgia, and ends in New Orleans, Louisiana. The four survivors have to fight their way through hordes of infected, using safehouses along the way to rest and recuperate in order to reach extraction points.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "Left 4 Dead 2" features a new cast of four human survivors: Coach (voiced by Chad Coleman), a stocky high school football coach with a bad knee (although this does not affect gameplay); Nick (voiced by Canadian singer Hugh Dillon), a pessimistic gambler and con artist; Rochelle (voiced by Rochelle Aytes), a low-level production assistant for a local television station that was reporting on the pandemic; and Ellis (voiced by Eric Ladin), a friendly and talkative redneck mechanic who often talks about his friend Keith and their many misadventures. In addition to the four playable characters, "Left 4 Dead 2" also features two supporting characters in the form of Whitaker (voiced by Dayton Callie), a gun store owner, and Virgil (voiced by Randall Newsome), a Cajun boat captain who appears (voice only) in the game's final three campaigns. Two soldiers heard in the final map of The Parish, voiced by Bob Gunter and Bill Huggins, round out the NPC cast.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "The Sacrifice" takes place before the main events of "Left 4 Dead 2" and after the events of comic book of the same name. At the end of the first game, the original survivors—Bill, Francis, Louis, and Zoey—arrive at the portside town of Rayford in Georgia in order to search for a boat that can take them to the Florida Keys. After finding an adequate sailboat, the survivors have to manually start up generators in order to lift a bridge for their boat to pass through. One survivor (canonically Bill) sacrifices themself in order to kick-start a generator once it gives out, so that the others may reach safety. This is the end of Bill's story in the "Left 4 Dead" video game series.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "Left 4 Dead 2" opens in "Dead Center" (set in Savannah, Georgia), where the four survivors find themselves abandoned on a hotel roof by rescue helicopters. They decide to head for the local mall, where a second CEDA evacuation point is located. After a brief encounter with a gun store owner, Whitaker, the survivors discover that the mall is overrun, with all CEDA agents having become either dead or infected as well. Ellis helps the group use a stock car to break out of the mall and travel towards New Orleans, rumored to be the last standing city in America.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "The Passing" takes place between "Dead Center" and "Dark Carnival", and after the events of "The Sacrifice" campaign. The survivors arrive at the bridge in Rayford, where they meet Francis, Louis, and Zoey. As they need to cross the bridge to proceed, the Survivors need to find another way across to refill the generator with gas. After fighting their way through a wedding reception (complete with a Witch bride), the streets, and a historic under-the-river tour, they meet up again with the original survivors, who help by covering for the group while they fill the generator and lowering the bridge once it's full.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: At the start of the "Dark Carnival" campaign, the four survivors find the highway ahead completely blocked by ditched vehicles, and are forced to travel on foot through an abandoned (but still operating) amusement park. After navigating their way to the park stadium, Coach devises a plan to use a large-scale light show on the concert stage, which had been abandoned by a rock band called The Midnight Riders, in order to signal a helicopter pilot for rescue. After being rescued, they later discover that their pilot is infected. When the pilot starts attacking them, Nick is forced to kill him (echoing a similar situation in "Left 4 Dead"), causing the chopper to crash into a bayou, which acts as the setting for "Swamp Fever". Working their way through the swamps, the group comes across a crashed airplane, dead military paratroopers, and isolated swamp villages which had held out against the infected but were eventually overrun. After spending the morning fighting through the swamp, the group arrives at a plantation mansion and make radio contact with Virgil, a Cajun boat captain who can assist them; however, his boat begins to run low on diesel fuel on the way to New Orleans.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: As a tumultuous hurricane approaches (the titular "Hard Rain" of the subsequent campaign), the survivors go ashore at Ducatel in Mississippi, after which they make their way through an abandoned (and Witch-infested) sugarcane mill to a gas station to get diesel fuel, and return to signal Virgil using the neon sign of a burger chain restaurant. In the final campaign, "The Parish", Virgil drops the group off at New Orleans, where the military appears to be evacuating civilians across a bridge. On the way there, the four discover the city overrun with infected and that the military is actually leaving the city. The group manages to reach the bridge, where they make contact with the military. Judging from their dialogue, the military pilots suspect the survivors to be "carriers", similar to the original survivors of "Left 4 Dead". After securing their rescue helicopter, the survivors lower and cross the bridge, escaping on the helicopter just as the bridge is destroyed. While the survivors' fate is left unclear after this point, the game's writer Chet Faliszek stated in a 2009 interview that the military took survivors on cruise ships to the Caribbean in an attempt to escape the infection.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Development for "Left 4 Dead 2" started shortly after the release of the first game—following a short break—building on ideas from the development team to make the next game "bigger and better". The game was given the code name "Carnation" to prevent revealing its details before its official announcement; Valve also considered a new title for the game, "Back 4 More", though they eventually dropped it for "Left 4 Dead 2".


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Chet Faliszek stated that "Left 4 Dead 2"s story would explore more of the world of the game, and that Valve had created a full story for the cause and effects of the infection pandemic, including terms that they have used for the AI Director. Each campaign was purposely designed with a different feel; however, all five campaigns were mapped out at the same time by the entire team to provide the narrative flow and ensure the uniqueness of each campaign. The team used a "Left 4 Dead" dictionary developed to describe level design and flow within the game to provide a common language for developing the levels.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "Left 4 Dead 2" contains about 7,800 unique lines of dialogue, a 40% increase over "Left 4 Dead". The writers designed the characters and selected appropriate voice actors who had natural accents for their lines and allowed the actors freedom to help authenticate the roles. They would attend recording sessions for the voice actors and allow them to ad-lib their lines for their characters, often getting new ideas for character dialogue to be recorded later, particularly in the case of Ellis (voiced by Eric Ladin) and Nick (Hugh Dillon). Randall Newsome, the voice of the boat captain Virgil, was a local actor from Louisiana who naturally spoke Cajun and helped to embellish the role better than the writers could. Faliszek wanted to include a "no-nonsense" woman from a Department of Motor Vehicles, but this character did not make the cut. The developers solicited several bands to include them in the game: Depeche Mode responded eagerly, and allowed Valve to use its music and other imagery in the game, such as on Rochelle's T-shirt.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: In introducing the new Infected, the development team had to consider how the new abilities would mesh with the existing Infected and any changes they had made to them. One discarded idea for a new Infected included the "Leaker"; the creature, when having taken damage, would shoot out spouts of goo at the survivors, and then would be able to self-detonate like the Boomer. However, this sacrificial act would have given survivors time to escape, and the idea was dropped, though features of the Leaker were built into the Spitter.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: In development, the programmers wanted to find a way to provide more variation and visual effects for the players, although they were already strained by memory limitations on the Xbox 360 for "Left 4 Dead". One key development factor was recognizing a way to create greater variation in the appearance of the common infected through a number of modeling and rendering tasks. Simple changes of the underlying geometry of the model, either the head or the body, with the resulting effects on the texture mapping was one means to create apparent variation. Another means was created by using different head textures along with various blood and dirt maps, and similarly different wounds applied to the body texture. A final means to alter the tone of both the skin and the clothing worn by the infected. As a result, a single infected model could have up to 24,000 variations within the game. This allowed Valve to effectively only keep two to six common infected core models in memory for each level, leaving only the unique infected for each campaign and the special infected as their own unique models. As a result, the memory use for the infected dropped by 50%. Valve's programmers also sought how to better represent damage the players did to the infected by showing inflicted wounds in the appropriate location and in a manner based on the weapon used, allowing for the inclusion of more resilient infected creatures in advanced game modes. They had simulated this in "Left 4 Dead" by having five possible character models that would result from a fatal attack but felt this could be advanced further. Already limited by memory concerns on the Xbox 360 that prevented further variations on the core infected models, the team devised a system of using textures with transparencies combined with ellipsoid culling from any infected character model to simulate the wounds, with several graphical process simplifications to avoid taxing the rendering system. This allowed the team to simulate up to two such wounds on each infected using only 13% of the memory resources of the based system in "Left 4 Dead".


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Another visual aspect that the Valve team explored was the rendering of water, particularly in the "Swamp Fever" campaign, which takes place mostly in a large swamp area. Valve found early play-testers would become confused with the large, tree-covered map, but by adding hints of water movement in the direction they were to go, there was a significant reduction in players becoming lost on the map. The water maps were created by using the 3D animation tool Houdini against its landscape maps to create realistic water flow patterns as surface maps. These surface maps were then applied in a "flowing" manner instead of the scrolling manner used in previous games. These water effects were further expanded upon for Valve's next game, "Portal 2".


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Doug Lombardi, vice-president of marketing for Valve, noted that the SDK released for "Left 4 Dead" would also be compatible with "Left 4 Dead 2".


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: PC and Xbox 360 players who pre-ordered "Left 4 Dead 2" through participating retailers gained early access to the game's demo, which was released on October 27, 2009 for Xbox Live and October 28, 2009 for PC players, and an exclusive baseball bat melee weapon to be used in game. Pre-ordering the PC version of the game through the Steam network also unlocks Bill's beret from "Left 4 Dead" for use in the PC version of "Team Fortress 2". Also, when a person buys the game and starts up Team Fortress 2, they will get a frying pan as a melee weapon and Ellis' hat as an in-game hat. The demo became available for all PC and Xbox Live Gold users on November 4, 2009 with Xbox Live Silver users gaining access on November 11, 2009. The demo features the first two maps in "The Parish" campaign.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: On October 5, 2009, Valve announced that "Left 4 Dead 2" would be promoted by a $25 million advertising campaign, exceeding the $10 million that supported "Left 4 Dead". The campaign includes television advertisements during sporting events, on billboards and magazines; and more aggressive advertising for Europe.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "Left 4 Dead 2" was released on Steam on November 16, 2009. Retail copies were made available some days after, depending on the country.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: In March 2010, Valve announced that it would be bringing the Steam content platform to Mac OS X computers; along with it, Steam will be providing native versions of existing Valve games including "Left 4 Dead 2" and its predecessor. The games will support cross-platform play, allowing Mac players to play alongside PC players on the same servers, and will also be part of its Steam Play cross-compatible and Steam Cloud titles, allowing a player who has purchased the game on one platform to download and play it on the other platform for free. The Mac OS X client was released on October 5, 2010.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: With the introduction of a Linux client for Steam, Valve has affirmed that "Left 4 Dead 2" will be developed for Linux. The Linux version of "Left 4 Dead 2" was released on May 3, 2013.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: On December 25, 2013, Valve released the game for free for new players. The Christmas update also included a special achievement called "Ghost of Christmas Present," awarded to veteran players who helped the free holiday players survive in the game's campaign mode.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: On December 14, 2009, Valve announced the first DLC installment for "Left 4 Dead 2", "The Passing". Though initially planned to be released sometime in March 2010, "The Passing" was released on April 22, 2010. The content costs 560 Microsoft Points ($6.99) for the Xbox 360 and is free for PC and Mac users. The campaign, taking place between the "Dead Center" and "Dark Carnival" campaigns, features the cast of "Left 4 Dead 2" meeting with three of the survivors from the original "Left 4 Dead". The new group learns that the fourth original survivor, Bill, sacrificed himself to allow his comrades to continue on safely. The title "The Passing" can be interpreted in several ways; to Bill's passing, the brief passing encounter between the two groups, and of the first group of survivors "passing the torch" to the next. "The Passing" contains references to other zombie-themed works, including the games "Dead Rising" (2006) and "Plants vs. Zombies" (2009), and the film "28 Days Later" (2002). The add-on also features two new weapons, an M60 machine gun which becomes unusable once depleted of ammo, and a golf club for melee.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: A prequel to "The Passing", titled "The Sacrifice", was released on October 5, 2010, as an add-on for both "Left 4 Dead" and "Left 4 Dead 2". This prequel ties up the story of the original game, showing the events leading to the meeting of the two groups of survivors in "The Passing" from the point of the "Left 4 Dead" characters. However, players can choose which character will sacrifice themselves for the others to safely continue on and not just the canonical choice of Bill. Valve also provided the full "No Mercy" campaign from "Left 4 Dead" as a "Left 4 Dead 2" campaign, which is playable with the original Survivors from "Left 4 Dead". Though the maps are nearly identical to their appearance in "Left 4 Dead", No Mercy in "Left 4 Dead 2" contains all of the enhancements of the sequel, including the new Special Infected, Uncommon Infected, melee weapons, additional guns, and the ability to use the new game modes, including Mutations and Scavenge mode.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: An additional community-created downloadable content package, called "Cold Stream", was released July 24, 2012 for Xbox 360 and PC. Valve has announced testing had begun on the Xbox 360, as well as for all the original Left 4 Dead maps via L4D Blog. The content is in public beta, available to players for testing and data collection on any issues, with a complete release date on 24 July. On July 24 it was announced that Valve did not send the downloadable content package to Microsoft. On August 1, 2012, it was announced that Cold Stream would be made available for Xbox 360 on August 3, at the price point of 560 MSP ($6.99).


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: A community-made scenario, "The Last Stand", was released on September 24, 2020 with Valve's blessing as an official update to the game. The update includes a new campaign of the same name, over twenty new survival maps and several miscellaneous changes to the game. The leads on the community project had worked on levels and had pitched the idea to Valve around 2019, but at that time, the studio was in the final stages of finishing "", but gave the team permission to continue what it was doing, including providing a map of a lighthouse setting (the origin of "The Last Stand" name) that was used in the original "Left 4 Dead" as a Survival-mode exclusive map"." When "Alyx" was mostly complete, members from Valve took time to review the state of the project, and were impressed with its state. Valve subsequently provided minimal technical support in terms of Source engine support, leaving the community team to handle the rest.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: A proposed content package and tie-in for the 2012 horror film "The Cabin in the Woods" was in the works, but the project dissolved after the film's original production company, MGM, filed for bankruptcy. The film's director, Drew Goddard, commented on what the downloadable content would have included, stating: "The game was gonna be amazing. You were gonna be able to play in both the upstairs "Cabin in the Woods" world and the downstairs 'facility' world with all the monsters. Believe me, I HATE all video games based on movies, they always suck, but porting "Cabin" into "Left For Dead" felt like the right fit. It pains me that it didn't happen." Valve did allow the filmmakers to include the "Left 4 Dead 2" bosses as monsters to populate some of the scenes in the film despite the failed project.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: On April 4, 2013 a "Resident Evil 6" crossover DLC was released for the PC version. It adds the main characters and two monsters from "Left 4 Dead 2" to the PC-exclusive The Mercenaries: No Mercy mode in "Resident Evil 6". Also three monsters from "Resident Evil 6" are added as replacement skins to existing monsters on the PC version of "Left 4 Dead 2".


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: On August 20, 2015, an update for the game "Zombie Army Trilogy" was released, which imported the eight survivors from both "Left 4 Dead" games into "ZAT".


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Mutations are modifications on "Left 4 Dead 2"s game modes, which have been offered every week after "The Passing"'s release; these game modes alter the conditions of play. All Mutations are now available through an update, making them selectable in the PC version. At this time Valve added the "Realism Versus" mutation to the game as a permanent game mode. All Mutations became available for Xbox 360 users with the release of Cold Stream.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Similar to "Left 4 Dead" and other Source Engine-based games, a number of players have constructed new maps, campaigns, and other variations for "Left 4 Dead 2", supported by Valve through their software development kit for the game. With the kit, players have found ways to include the original "Left 4 Dead" campaigns into "Left 4 Dead 2". Players have also found ways to increase the number of survivors up to 16, duplicating the graphics for the existing survivor characters as needed. In August 2010, Valve announced that it will promote selected community generated maps, one every two weeks, both by blog posts on their official site, and by offering the map on a number of their dedicated servers. Valve updated the game in January 2013 to include support for Steam Workshop, allowing users to create and share new scenarios, maps, clothing and weapons, and to create Mutation-like changes that can be applied to existing maps. A further patch in February 2013 introduced a new scripting system, Expanded Mutation System, that gives programmers more control and options to create new Mutations that can be played across any map or to customize behavior in specific campaigns; one such user-created Mutation creates an experience similar to the Zombie mode in "", allowing players to buy weapons and barricades to fight off waves of zombies.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: A Japanese arcade cabinet version of "L4D2" titled was developed and released under license by Taito in December 2014. The arcade version featured a unique mouse-and-handset control scheme, exclusive skins and weapons, online and local connected play, and unique limited online events (with the online service ending in 2017). The plot and gameplay remains largely unchanged from "L4D2", streamlined and modified for a time-limited arcade environment. The game also features four exclusive survivors which replace the original survivors: (voiced by Ayane Sakura), a Japanese schoolgirl visiting America on a school trip; (voiced by Ryuichi Kijima), a Japanese college student on vacation; (voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro), a half-Japanese half-American tour guide; and (voiced by Hidenori Takahashi), an American bartender and army veteran.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: On the PC, the original competitive modification named "Confogl", was created by community member ProdigySim. It is now a playable mutation included in the game. Confogl is a set of rules for competitive Left 4 Dead 2 versus which standardizes certain elements and changes the distribution of items and weapons. It tips the scales toward the infected. Tournaments have been held utilizing the Confogl modification, such as the CEVO tournament.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "Left 4 Dead 2" received "generally favorable reviews" across both platforms according to review aggregator website Metacritic. Game journalists praised the changes made with the new melee weapons and firearms, the new strategies introduced through the new special infected, and the details of the southern locale and individual campaigns compared with the campaigns of the first game. "Ars Technica" praised the game's replayability and the attention put in every detail. "Libération" also praised the game, commenting that Valve was one of the last game studios making games geared toward hardcore PC gamers. "IGN" considered that the game improved on the first in every way, and that anyone who liked the concepts introduced by the first game should buy the second. "Eurogamer" also praised the game, and considered that it was "overflowing with personality". "Left 4 Dead 2" received the Best Xbox 360 Game award at the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards. The game has been nominated for the "Outstanding Achievement in Gameplay Engineering", "Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay", and "Action Game of the Year" Interactive Achievement Awards (now known as the D.I.C.E. Awards) from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. In 2016, it won the "Better With Friends" Award in the first-ever Steam Awards.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: The Xbox 360 version of the game was noted at launch for having serious issues with lag and slowdown in online game modes, the majority coming from using the game's dedicated servers. According to Valve, these problems were due to an unexpectedly huge number of players online on Xbox LIVE. It was shortly fixed after release by a server infrastructure change and adding new dedicated servers.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Pre-release sales estimates for "Left 4 Dead 2" were positive. As of July 2009, "Left 4 Dead 2" ranked first in purchase intent out of all upcoming games, with 9 out of 10 polled stating that they would buy the game. According to Lombardi, pre-orders for the sequel within the month following the announcement were double those for "Left 4 Dead" at the same time relative to release date. In a press release on October 5, 2009 Valve announced that, based on the strength of pre-orders, they expect "Left 4 Dead 2" to be the fastest selling product in the company's history, with the game's pre-release sales averaging 300% greater than "Left 4 Dead". In an interview in November 2009, Chet Faliszek claimed the number of pre-sales of "Left 4 Dead 2" were four times that of the original game.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: On December 1, 2009, Valve reported that more than two million retailed copies of "Left 4 Dead 2" were sold in two weeks, which represents "more than double" the sales of the original game's two week debut. According to the NPD Group, the Xbox 360 version was the fifth best-selling retail title for consoles in November 2009, with over 744,000 copies sold.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: In February 2010, Electronic Arts, "Left 4 Dead 2" retail distributor, revealed that the game had sold 2.9 million on retail so far while Forbes wrote that more than 4 million copies were sold at stores in 2009.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Over two weeks in July 2010, approximately 12,000 owners of "" were mistakenly banned by Valve's-Anti-Cheat system. Those affected received a free copy of the game or an extra copy to send as a gift.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: On May 10, 2011, Doug Lombardi mentioned that each of the "Left 4 Dead" games had sold three million copies on the Xbox 360. In August 2011, Faliszek said that the series had sold over 11 million in total. The game was offered free for a day on Steam on Christmas 2013.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "Left 4 Dead 2" has been a central issue in a number of critical discussions regarding its timing and its graphic and mature content. John Walker of UK-based gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun has theorized that this is due to higher expectations for Valve, given the perception of its status as an industry leader.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: The weekend following the game's announcement at the 2009 E3 Convention, some "Left 4 Dead" players called for a boycott of "Left 4 Dead 2" and formed the Steam community group called "L4D2 Boycott (NO-L4D2)" which grew to over 10,000 members by the end of that weekend, and reached more than 37,000 about a month later. In addition to a lack of further "Left 4 Dead" content, they were concerned with the characters, visuals, and music shown in the E3 demonstration video, feeling these were inappropriate to the first game's aesthetics, and that the release of the sequel so soon after the first game would fracture the community.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: In response to these complaints, Valve marketer Doug Lombardi stated that the announcement of "Left 4 Dead 2" at E3 should not be taken to indicate that Valve would no longer support the first game. He asked the community to "trust [them] a little bit," and told them that while their team was eager to get new material to players of "Left 4 Dead", they determined that a sequel would be the best option for several reasons: the demand for new campaigns, enemies and weapons could not be met as a simple DLC; both Faliszek and project lead Tom Leonard found that too much of the content relied on each other, making it very difficult to release incremental patches in the same style as "Team Fortress 2"; the development team liked the idea of rolling up the content into a sequel to be released a year after "Left 4 Dead"s release. Faliszek stated that Newell was skeptical of the idea when the team brought the sequel forward, but still allowed the project to go through.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: In September 2009, Valve flew two of the boycott group's most prominent members to Valve, in order to playtest "Left 4 Dead 2"; the two felt that the sequel was well done. This event, through a series of correspondences made in jest, shortly led to Valve's Gabe Newell and designer Erik Johnson flying to Australia to visit "Joe W-A", a "Left 4 Dead" modder. Newell jokingly reported that Valve was "boycotting" Joe's new mod for the game when Joe asked when he would be flown to Valve in the same manner as the "Left 4 Dead 2" boycotters, but whimsically offered that if Joe was to pay to fly him to the country, he would take a look at it. Joe was able to raise the required funds, US$3000, through donations through his website, though ultimately Newell paid for the trip himself, with Joe's collected donations going to the Child's Play charity.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: On October 14, 2009, the initiators of the boycott group announced that they had ended their boycott and were shutting down the 40,000-plus group because Valve was retaining their promise of additional content and fixes for "Left 4 Dead", such as the recent release of the "Crash Course" campaign. These gamers also believed that the group itself, losing its purpose, was now being used just to bad-mouth Valve, their staff and other players. In a video interview posted on October 29, 2009, Gabe Newell said, "for people who joined the Boycott Group on Steam ... they're actually pre-ordering the product at a higher rate than Left 4 Dead 1 owners who weren't in the boycott".


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Valve was forced to alter its original cover art for the game by the ESRB; the original image depicted the series' hand with its little finger, ring finger and the thumb torn off, which would thus have the index finger and middle finger remaining. It was deemed too explicit, and to appease the ESRB, Valve changed the image so that the fingers were merely bent back instead, but the company was still able to include the torn-off thumb in all regions except for Japan and Germany, where it had to be censored.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: The cover was further changed for release in the United Kingdom, as the two-finger sign with the back of the hand faced toward the viewer is considered an insult; the UK cover features the hand facing the opposite direction to avoid this, making it instead the more optimistic gesture for "victory".


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: Willie Jefferson of the "Houston Chronicle", after seeing initial promotional material for the game, considered that several of the infected "appear to be African-Americans" implying a racist approach to the game, and also noted that "setting the game in a city that was a scene of dead, bloated bodies floating by" some years after the impact of Hurricane Katrina was "a bad call". Faliszek, commenting on Jefferson's claims, considered the supposition to be "utter insanity", and commented that the infected are a mix of all races, and that the game's version of New Orleans is "not a brick-for-brick representation" of the city and were not trying to make any statement about it with the game. A writer for Kotaku considered that Jefferson "seems to me to be picking a fight where none exists." Others noted that the appearance of African-American infected simply reflected the racial diversity of New Orleans.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "Left 4 Dead 2" was refused classification in Australia by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC). It failed to gain an MA15+ rating, the highest possible rating for video games in Australia at the time of release. This prevented the sale of the original game within the country. In its report, the OFLC cited the reason for refusing classification as "realistic, frenetic and unrelenting violence". However, a small number of members of the OFLC board believed the game could merit the MA15+ rating which was used to publish the first "Left 4 Dead". It was expected that changes could be made to the game to allow the game to be classified as MA15+ and thus sold in Australia. Both Lombardi and Newell were "surprised" by the classification refusal. Valve appealed the OFLC's decision about a week after being notified of the ruling, comparing the sequel to its predecessor, which had been classified as MA15+, and the mature ratings the sequel had received from similar rating organizations around the world. However, as the appeal process, expected to end on October 22, was close to the planned release date, Valve submitted a modified version of the game for classification addressing the concerns the OFLC has stated. This version, which no longer contained images of "decapitation, dismemberment, wound detail or piles of dead bodies", was classified as MA15+ by the OFLC, thus allowing for the game's release in Australia, though Valve and Electronic Arts still hoped to have their preferred, unmodified version classified by the OFLC for release. The appeal of the decision to deny classification to the unedited version of the game was conducted by the independent Classification Review Board, and resulted in the previous ruling to deny classification being sustained. The Classification Review Board cited "insufficient delineation between the depiction of zombie characters and the human figures" as one of the key factors in its classification refusal.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: "Left 4 Dead 2"s classification refusal, as well as for other recent games such as "Fallout 3" (has since been rerated MA15+ having the same version as other countries) and "Aliens vs. Predator" (has since appealed and rerated MA15+ uncut), has reignited debate over the current prohibition of sale and exhibition of video games for mature audiences. In mid-December 2009, the Australian government sought public opinion on the adult classification rating for video games, despite statements by South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson believing the issue to only affect a minority of the country's citizens. Following Atkinson's decision to leave the Attorneys General to be replaced by John Rau, who is reportedly in favour of an R18+ rating, Valve have revealed that, should the bill be passed, they planned to release an uncensored version of "Left 4 Dead 2" for PC in Australia. The Australian Federal Parliament passed legislation allowing an R18+ classification for video games on January 1, 2013, and Valve stated they would be exploring legal options of resubmitting the uncensored version of "Left 4 Dead 2" following this change.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: On August 29, 2014, the uncensored version was reclassified R18+, effectively unbanning the game, five years after the original release, with Valve adding in the availability to switch to the uncensored version as downloadable content for users who had purchased the game before the ratings change.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: In order to achieve the highest possible rating given by Germany's Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle ("Freigegeben ab 18 Jahren gemäß § 14 JuSchG", meaning "Restricted for those below the age of 18"), Valve had to heavily censor the game's violent content similar to the Australian version. However, the international (and thus uncensored) version was indexed by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons on December 1, 2009 in order to prevent sellers from advertising or selling it to minors. On February 15, 2010, the Amtsgericht Tiergarten confiscated all European PC versions for violation of (representation of violence), meaning they may not be sold; however, it is still legal to import (with the risk that the game is confiscated by customs) and own the game. The court said that the game trivializes violence due to its high killing rate and explicit graphical representation of mutilation. They also sensed a strong cynical attitude behind the game's concept.


title: Left 4 Dead 2

text: On January 29, 2021, the uncensored version was released for Germany after a re-evaluation from German authorities. Users in Germany who had purchased the game, can switch to the uncensored version as downloadable content, similarly to Australian consumers.


title: Pikes Peak

text: Pikes Peak is the highest summit of the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, in North America. The ultra-prominent fourteener is located in Pike National Forest, west of downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado. The town of Manitou Springs lies at its base.


title: Pikes Peak

text: The mountain is named in honor of American explorer Zebulon Pike (though he was unable to reach the summit). The summit is higher than any point in the United States east of its longitude.


title: Pikes Peak

text: The band of Ute people who called the Pikes Peak region their home were the Tabeguache, whose name means the "People of Sun Mountain". or "sun", is the Ute word that was given by these first people to the mountain that we now call Pikes Peak. It is thought that the Ute people first arrived in Colorado about 500 A.D., however their oral history states that they were created on Tava. In the 1800s, when the Arapaho people arrived in Colorado, they knew the mountain as meaning "Long Mountain".


title: Pikes Peak

text: Throughout its history, European peoples have called the mountain El Capitán, Grand Peak, Great Peak, James Peak, Long Mountain, and Pike's Peak.


title: Pikes Peak

text: Early Spanish explorers named the mountain "El Capitán," meaning "The Leader". American explorer Zebulon Pike named the mountain "Highest Peak" in 1806, and the mountain was later commonly known as "Pike's Highest Peak." American explorer Stephen Harriman Long named the mountain "James Peak" in honor of Edwin James who climbed to the summit during Long's Expedition of 1820. The mountain was later renamed "Pike's Peak" in honor of Pike. The name was simplified to "Pikes Peak" by the United States Board on Geographic Names in 1890.


title: Pikes Peak

text: Pikes Peak is one of Colorado's 54 fourteeners, mountains more than above sea level. The massif rises above downtown Colorado Springs. Pikes Peak is a designated National Historic Landmark. It is composed of a characteristic pink granite called Pikes Peak granite. The color is due to a large amount of potassium feldspar.


title: Pikes Peak

text: It is thought that the granite was once magma that crystallized at least beneath the Earth's surface, formed by an igneous intrusion during the Precambrian, approximately 1.05 billion years ago, during the Grenville orogeny. Through the process of uplifting, the hardened rock pushed through the Earth's crust and created a dome-like mountain, covered with less resistant rock. Years of erosion and weathering removed the soil and rock leaving the exposed mountain.


title: Pikes Peak

text: Soils on Pikes Peak above the timberline (approximately ) are classified as "Cirque land". Forests at lower altitudes mostly lie over the brown stony, sandy, loams of the "Catamount loam" or "Ivywild loam" series.


title: Pikes Peak

text: The Devils Playground is a minor subpeak of Pikes Peak located on the northwest side of the mountain near the Pikes Peak Highway. The Devils Playground is named for the way lightning sometimes dances around the prominence during lightning storms. The Devils Playground is the highest point in Teller County at an approximate elevation of .


title: Pikes Peak

text: The first Europeans to see Pikes Peak were the Spanish in the 1700s. The first American sighting is often credited to members of the Pike Expedition, led by Zebulon Pike. After a failed attempt to climb to the top in November 1806, Pike wrote in his journal:


title: Pikes Peak

text: The first European-American to climb the peak came 14 years after Pike, in the summer of 1820. Edwin James, a young student who had just graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont, signed on as the relief botanist for Stephen Harriman Long's expedition after the first botanist had died. The expedition explored the South Platte River up as far as present-day Denver, then turned south and passed close to what James called "Pike's highest peak". James and two other men left the expedition, camped on the plains, and climbed the peak in two days, encountering little difficulty. Along the way, James was the first to describe the blue columbine, Colorado's state flower.


title: Pikes Peak

text: Gold was discovered in the area of present-day Denver in 1858, and newspapers referred to the gold-mining area as "Pike's Peak". "Pike's Peak or Bust" became the slogan of the Colorado Gold Rush (see also Fifty-Niner). This was more due to Pikes Peak's visibility to gold seekers traveling west across the plains than any actual significant gold find anywhere near Pikes Peak. Major gold deposits were not discovered in the Pikes Peak area until the Cripple Creek Mining District was discovered southwest of Pikes Peak and led, in 1893, to one of the last major gold rushes in the lower 48 states.


title: Pikes Peak

text: In July 1860, Clark, Gruber and Company commenced minting gold coins in Denver bearing the phrase "Pike's Peak Gold" and an artist's rendering of the peak (sight unseen) on the obverse. In 1863, the U.S. Treasury purchased the minting equipment for $25,000 (or $ adjusted for inflation) to open the Denver Mint.


title: Pikes Peak

text: Julia Archibald Holmes and James Holmes traveled to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in 1858, and reached the summit on August 5, with J. D. Miller and George Peck, making Archibald Holmes the first European-American woman to climb Pikes Peak. From the summit, she wrote in a letter to her mother: "Nearly everyone tried to discourage me from attempting it, but I believed that I should succeed; and now here I am, and I feel that I would not have missed this glorious sight for anything at all."


title: Pikes Peak

text: Thirty-five years later, in July 1893, Katharine Lee Bates wrote the song "America the Beautiful", after having admired the view from the top of Pikes Peak. It appeared in print in "The Congregationalist", a weekly journal, on July 4, 1895. A plaque commemorating the words to the song was placed at the summit.


title: Pikes Peak

text: On July 17, 1913 William Wayne Brown drove his car, the "Bear Cat", to the summit. The ascent took 5 hours and 28 minutes.


title: Pikes Peak

text: The uppermost portion of Pikes Peak, above 14,000 feet (4,267 m) elevation, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.


title: Pikes Peak

text: There are several visitor centers on Pikes Peak, some with a gift shop and restaurant. These centers are located at the and markers of the toll road, plus one at the summit itself.


title: Pikes Peak

text: Along with other food, the Summit House sells special high altitude doughnuts, frying up to 700 per hour. The doughnuts collapse or go mushy if transported to lower altitudes.


title: Pikes Peak

text: There are several ways to ascend the mountain. The Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway, the world's highest cog railroad, operated from Manitou Springs to the summit, but closed for repairs in 2017. But after over three years of being closed, the cog railway resumed service seven days a week (conditions permitting) on May 27, 2021.


title: Pikes Peak

text: Road vehicles can be driven to the summit via the Pikes Peak Highway, a road that starts a few miles up Ute Pass at Cascade. The road has a series of switchbacks, treacherous at high speed, called "The W's" for their shape on the northwest side of the mountain. The road is maintained by the city of Colorado Springs as a toll road. A project to pave the remainder of the road was completed on October 1, 2011. The project is in response to a suit by the Sierra Club over damage caused by the gravel and sediment that is constantly washed off the road into the alpine environment. The road remained open during construction.


title: Pikes Peak

text: The Highway is famous worldwide for the annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, a motor race held since 1916. The short film "Climb Dance" features Ari Vatanen racing his Peugeot automobile up the steep, twisty slopes. It also hosts the Pikes Peak Cycling Hill Climb (formerly Assault on the Peak), a cycling hillclimb race first held in 2010, and the USA Cycling Hill Climb National Championships, a race first held in 2016.


title: Pikes Peak

text: The most popular hiking route to the top is called Barr Trail, which approaches the summit from the east. The trailhead is just past the cog railway depot in Manitou Springs. Visitors can walk, hike, or bike the trail. Although the Barr Trail is rated only Class 1, it is a long and arduous hike with nearly of elevation gain, and a trip one-way. The Pikes Peak Marathon, a trail race held since 1956, is a round trip between the trailhead and the Pikes Peak. The Barr Trail Mountain Race is a round trip between the trailhead and Barr Camp. Another route begins at Crags Campground, approaching the summit from the west.


title: Pikes Peak

text: Since the end of 1922, the AdAmAn Club, a mountaineering group, climb the Barr Trail on the east face of Pikes Peak each year on December 30th, stay overnight at Barr Camp, and continue to the top on December 31. Then, at midnight on New Year's Eve, the AdAmAn members and their guests ignite a fireworks display from the summit.


title: Pikes Peak

text: Since 1969, the summit of Pikes Peak has been the site of the United States Army Pikes Peak Research Laboratory, a medical research laboratory for the assessment of the impact of high altitude on human physiological and medical parameters of military interest.


title: Pikes Peak

text: On June 4, 2018, ground-breaking was held for a new Summit Complex which is being constructed next to the current Summit House. The older facility will remain open to the more than 600,000 visitors annually through the end of construction in the fall of 2020 or summer of 2021. Around 40 contractors are working on the $50 million project. The general contractor, G.E. Johnson Construction Co., estimates that about half of the budget is for materials, many of which are prefabricated in downslope shops, and the balance is for labor, because of the project's high standards and the rigors of working for a maximum of  hours per day at such a high altitude during a short season of April to October. Heavy equipment and prefabricated building components are slowly moved up the mountain's highway in the middle of the night to avoid any car traffic. Ground conditions are bedrock and alpine permafrost, soil and rock that remains at or below freezing temperatures all year to depths of up to , only warming above freezing in direct sunlight or due to external sources. Problems with excavation and blasting exist because the permafrost in the fractured granite actually absorbs energy. The project is being constructed to achieve both Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum Certification and Living Building Challenge. The new complex will include a visitor center, a communications facility for Colorado Springs Utilities, and the Army's High-Altitude Research Laboratory.


title: Pikes Peak

text: At the peak, the partial pressure of oxygen is only about 60% of that at sea level. Water boils at at 14,000 feet, rather than at sea level.


title: Pikes Peak

text: A faster rate of respiration is required by humans and animals not acclimated to high altitudes. Altitude sickness may develop in those who are sensitive or who over-exert themselves.


title: Pikes Peak

text: The summit of Pikes Peak has a polar climate (ET) due to its elevation. Snow is a possibility any time year-round, and thunderstorms with high winds gusting up to or more are common in the afternoons.


title: Pikes Peak

text: Surrounding areas have different climatic variations depending on location and elevation. Much of the area near Pikes Peak has a continental semiarid climate, while other areas would be classified as hemiboreal.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Samuel Kanyon Doe (6 May 1951 – 9 September 1990) was a Liberian politician who served as the 21st president of Liberia from 1980 to 1990. Doe ruled Liberia as Chairman of the People's Redemption Council (PRC) from 1980 to 1984 and then as president from 1985 to 1990.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Doe was a master sergeant in the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) when he staged the violent 1980 coup d'état that overthrew President William Tolbert and the True Whig Party, becoming the first non-Americo-Liberian leader of Liberia and ending 133 years of Americo-Liberian rule. Doe suspended the Constitution of Liberia, assumed the rank of general, and established the PRC as a provisional military government with himself as "de facto" head of state. Doe dissolved the PRC in 1984, and attempted to legitimize his regime with a new constitution and being elected president in the 1985 general election, which he won despite evidence of election fraud. Doe opened Liberian ports to Canadian, Chinese and European ships which brought in considerable foreign investment and earned Liberia's reputation as a tax haven. Doe had support from the United States due to his anti-Soviet stance during the Cold War.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Doe's rule was characterized by totalitarianism, corruption, and his favoritism towards ethnic Krahns, which led to growing opposition to his regime from the Liberian public and the United States. The First Liberian Civil War began in December 1989 when the anti-Doe National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) led by Charles Taylor invaded Liberia from the Ivory Coast to overthrow him. Doe was captured and executed by Prince Johnson in September 1990.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Samuel Kanyon Doe was born on 6 May 1951 in Tuzon, a small inland village in Grand Gedeh County. His family belonged to the Krahn people, a minority indigenous group important in this area. At the age of sixteen, Doe finished elementary school and enrolled at a Baptist junior high school in Zwedru.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Two years later, he enlisted in the Armed Forces of Liberia, hoping thereby to obtain a scholarship to a high school in Kakata, but instead he was assigned to military duties. Over the next ten years, he was assigned to a range of duty stations, including education at a military school and commanding an assortment of garrisons and prisons in Monrovia. He finally completed high school by correspondence. Doe was promoted to the grade of Master sergeant on 11 October 1979 and made an administrator for the Third Battalion in Monrovia, a position which he occupied for eleven months.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Commanding a group of Krahn soldiers, Master Sergeant Samuel Doe led a military coup on 12 April 1980 by attacking the Liberian Executive Mansion and killing President William R. Tolbert Jr. His forces killed another 26 of Tolbert's supporters in the fighting. Thirteen members of the Cabinet were publicly executed ten days later. Shortly after the coup, government ministers were walked publicly around Monrovia in the nude and then summarily executed by a firing squad on the beach. The convicted were denied the right to a lawyer or to any appeal. Hundreds of government workers fled the country, while others were imprisoned.


title: Samuel Doe

text: After the coup, Doe assumed the rank of general and established a People's Redemption Council (PRC), composed of himself and 14 other low-ranking officers, to rule the country. The early days of the regime were marked by mass executions of members of Tolbert's deposed government. Doe ordered the release of about 50 leaders of the opposition Progressive People's Party, who had been jailed by Tolbert during the rice riots of the previous month.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Shortly after that, Doe ordered the arrest of 91 officials of the Tolbert regime. Within days, 11 former members of Tolbert's cabinet, including his brother Frank, were brought to trial to answer charges of "high treason, rampant corruption and gross violation of human rights." Doe suspended the Constitution, allowing these trials to be conducted by a Commission appointed by the state's new military leadership, with defendants being refused both legal representation and trial by jury, virtually ensuring their conviction.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Doe abruptly ended 133 years of Americo-Liberian political domination. Some hailed the coup as the first time since Liberia's establishment as a country that it was governed by people of native African descent instead of by the Americo-Liberian elite. Other persons without Americo-Liberian heritage had held the Vice Presidency (Henry Too Wesley), as well as Ministerial and Legislative positions in years prior. Many people welcomed Doe's takeover as a shift favoring the majority of the population that had largely been excluded from participation in government since the establishment of the country.


title: Samuel Doe

text: However, the new government, led by the leaders of the "coup d'état" and calling itself the People's Redemption Council (PRC), lacked experience and was ill-prepared to rule. Doe became head of state and suspended the constitution, but promised a return to civilian rule by 1985.


title: Samuel Doe

text: In the first alleged plot against his government, nine military personnel arrested two months after the original 1980 coup were reportedly jailed for life.


title: Samuel Doe

text: In June 1981, his government denounced another alleged coup in which thirteen members were executed behind closed doors.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Months later, Thomas Weh Syen, an outspoken critic of some of Doe's policies, including the closure months before of the Libyan diplomatic mission and the forced reduction of staff from fifteen to six at the Soviet embassy, was beaten and arrested on 12 August of that same year, along with four other officers. They were promised a defense attorney but none was given, and in three days they were executed, which caused panic in the citizens of the capital.


title: Samuel Doe

text: In August 2008, before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Monrovia, Doe's former justice minister, Councillor Chea Cheapoo — who contested the 2011 Liberia Presidential elections — alleged the American CIA had provided a map of the Executive Mansion, enabling the rebels to break into it; that it was a white American CIA agent who shot and killed Tolbert; and that the Americans "were responsible for Liberia’s nightmare". However, the next day, before the same TRC, another former minister of Samuel Doe, Dr. Boima Fahnbulleh, testified that "the Americans did not support the coup led by Mr. Doe".


title: Samuel Doe

text: Some facts of the 1980 coup are still clouded by reports of an "Unknown Soldier". It is reported that an "unknown soldier" was one of the "white" mercenaries who would have staged the 1980 military takeover of the state. According to the autobiography of Tolbert's wife Victoria, the First Lady witnessed a masked man with a "white" hand stabbing her late husband.


title: Samuel Doe

text: During his rule, Doe portrayed himself as an enlightened leader whose actions were intended to bring "relief to many". He styled himself "Dr. Doe" starting in 1982, after making a state visit to Chun Doo-hwan in South Korea and being awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Seoul. After seven years of calling himself a doctor, Doe announced in 1989 that he had completed a bachelor's degree from the University of Liberia.


title: Samuel Doe

text: During his first years in office, Doe openly supported U.S. Cold War foreign policy in Africa during the 1980s, severing diplomatic relations between Liberia and the Soviet Union.


title: Samuel Doe

text: The United States valued Liberia as an important ally during the Cold War, as it helped to contain the spread of Soviet influence in Africa. As part of the expanding relationship, Doe agreed to a modification of the mutual defense pact granting staging rights on 24-hour notice at Liberia's sea and airports for the U.S. Rapid Deployment Forces, which were established to respond swiftly to security threats around the world.


title: Samuel Doe

text: A draft constitution providing for a multi-party republic was issued in 1983 and approved by referendum in 1984. On 26 July 1984, Doe was elected President of the Interim National Assembly. He had a new constitution approved by referendum in 1984 and went on to stage a presidential election on 15 October 1985. According to official figures, Doe won 51% of the vote—just enough to avoid a runoff. The NDPL won 21 of the 26 Senate seats and 51 of the 64 seats in the House of Representatives. However, most of the elected opposition candidates refused to take their seats.


title: Samuel Doe

text: The election was heavily rigged; Doe had the ballots taken to a secret location and 50 of his own handpicked staff counted them. Foreign observers declared the elections fraudulent and suggested that runner-up Jackson Doe of the Liberian Action Party had actually won. Also, prior to the election he had more than 50 of his political opponents murdered. It is also alleged that he changed his official birth date from 1951 to 1950 in order to meet the new constitution's requirement that the president be at least 35 years old. Doe was formally sworn in on 6 January 1986. On the day of his inauguration as twenty-first president, in the stadium a show with several Liberian girls danced artistically in his honor with various hoops, later the dancers danced with maracas, finally the army paraded in line and in the first they played a majestic orchestra.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Doe publicly declared that if he lost the elections, he would not hand over power and the army would carry out another coup in less than two weeks, a position that was harshly criticized by the international community and the political parties participating in the elections. Official results showed that Doe received a narrow majority of the votes cast in the elections, although the US State department alleged widespread fraud.


title: Samuel Doe

text: General Thomas Quiwonkpa, who had been a leader of the 1980 coup along with Doe, attempted to seize power on 12 November 1985; the attempt failed after fighting in Monrovia in which Quiwonkpa was killed. Doe also announced in a radio and television broadcast that anyone found on the streets after a 6 p.m. curfew would be considered a rebel and executed immediately.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Doe's corrupt and totalitarian government became even more repressive after the attempted coup, shutting down newspapers and banning political activity. The government's mistreatment of certain ethnic groups, particularly the Gio (or Dan) and the Mano in the north (Quiwonkpa was an ethnic Gio), resulted in divisions and violence among indigenous populations who until then had coexisted peacefully.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Charles Taylor, a former ally of Doe, crossed into Liberia from Ivory Coast on 24 December 1989, to wage a guerrilla war against Doe. Taylor had broken out of a jail in the United States, where he was awaiting extradition to Liberia on charges of embezzlement. The conflict quickly flared into full-fledged civil war. By mid-1990, most of Liberia was controlled by rebel factions.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Approximately 600 civilians were killed at the church in the Sinkor section of Monrovia on 29 July 1990. The massacre was carried out by approximately 30 government soldiers loyal to President Samuel Doe. The perpetrators were of Doe's Krahn tribe while most of the victims were from the Gio and Mano tribes, which were in support of the rebels.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Doe was captured in Monrovia on 9 September 1990, by Prince Y. Johnson, leader of INPFL, a breakaway faction of Taylor's NPFL. General Quinoo, the head of ECOMOG, had invited Doe to the ECOMOG headquarters for a meeting and assured him of his safety from the rebels. On the morning of 9 September 1990, Doe arrived at a precarious time during an ongoing change in guard duty from the well-armed and better equipped Nigerian team of peacekeepers to the weaker Gambian contingent. The Nigerian team had just withdrawn from the scene when Doe's convoy of lightly armed personnel arrived. Doe was escorted to General Quinoo's office where he was formally welcomed, while most of his team of aides and guards waited outside. Johnson's rebels surprised everyone by suddenly arriving on the scene uninvited and heavily armed, overwhelming and disarming the entirety of Doe's team while encountering no resistance. They then started shooting Doe's team individually and later in groups. Upon hearing the gunshots from outside, Doe expressed concern to Quinoo, who assured him that all was fine. Quinoo later excused himself to check on what was happening outside and was followed by his aide, Captain Coker of the Gambian contingent. Both men took cover upon assessing the situation. Johnson's men moved indoors, finished off Doe's remaining team, shot him in the leg, and took him captive. When the dust settled, over 80 of Doe's men lay dead. Coker characterized the incident not as a fight, but a brutal massacre. Remarkably, none of the ECOMOG personnel were shot in the carnage.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Doe was taken to Johnson's military base. To prove that he was not protected by black magic, Johnson ordered Doe's ears be cut off in his presence. Shackles were also placed around Doe's legs and something strange was tied around his glans, as can be seen in the recording. At the end of the recording Doe was forced to get up, some of his fingers and toes were also amputated, and there were attempts to mutilate the middle finger. After 12 hours of torture at Johnson's hands, Doe was finally murdered; his corpse had its head shaved and was exhibited naked in the streets of Monrovia with cigarette burns. Doe's body was later exhumed and reburied. The spectacle of his torture was video-taped and seen on news reports around the country. The video shows Johnson sipping a beer as Doe's ear is cut off.


title: Samuel Doe

text: Doe was a Baptist. At one time, he was a member of the First Baptist Church in the town of Zwedru in Grand Gedeh County. He changed his church membership to the Providence Baptist Church of Monrovia on 1 December 1985. Doe was a passionate football fan, and the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex bears his name.


title: Samuel Doe

text: In November 2000, at a religious rally representing the Doe family, Doe's son Samuel Kanyon Doe Jr; accompanied by his mother Nancy, President Doe's widow, told a conference that he had feelings of hatred and resentment against "a certain person in particular", thoughts of revenge against his father's murderer for the past 10 years and that he intended to cleanse his sins and feelings of hatred and revenge against his father's executioner. Both parties were reconciled at the hand of the Nigerian Reverend Pastor T. B. Joshua.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Naypyidaw, officially spelled Nay Pyi Taw (; ), is the capital and third-largest city of Myanmar. The city is located at the centre of the Naypyidaw Union Territory. It is unusual among Myanmar's cities, as it is an entirely planned city outside of any state or region. The city, then known only as Pyinmana District, officially replaced Yangon as the administrative capital of Myanmar on 6 November 2005; its official name was revealed to the public on Armed Forces Day, 27 March 2006.


title: Naypyidaw

text: As the seat of the government of Myanmar, Naypyidaw is the site of the Union Parliament, the Supreme Court, the Presidential Palace, the official residences of the Cabinet of Myanmar and the headquarters of government ministries and military. Naypyidaw is notable for its unusual combination of large size and very low population density. The city hosted the 24th and 25th ASEAN Summit, the 3rd BIMSTEC Summit, the Ninth East Asia Summit, the 2013 Southeast Asian Games and the 2014 AFC U-19 Championship.


title: Naypyidaw

text: "Naypyidaw" is Burmese for "abode of the king", and is generally translated as "royal capital", "seat of the king", or "abode of kings". Traditionally, it was used as a suffix to the names of royal capitals, such as Mandalay, which was called Yattanarbon Naypyidaw ().


title: Naypyidaw

text: Naypyidaw was founded on a greenfield site near Pyinmana, about north of the old capital, Yangon. Construction started in 2002 and was completed by 2012. At least 25 construction companies were hired by the military government to build the city. It is estimated that the planned city development reaches US$4 billion.


title: Naypyidaw

text: On 6 November 2006, more than 12,000 troops marched in the new capital in its first public event: a massive military parade to mark Armed Forces Day, the anniversary of Burma's 1945 revolution against the Japanese occupation. Filming was restricted to the concrete parade ground, which contains enormous sculptures of Kings Anawrahta, Bayinnaung and Alaungpaya. The city was officially named Naypyidaw during these ceremonies, and the official, albeit mostly administrative, capital of the country was relocated from Yangon to Naypyidaw.


title: Naypyidaw

text: There are several assumptions why the capital was moved: Naypyidaw is more centrally located than the old capital, Yangon. It is also a transportation hub located adjacent to the Shan, Kayah, and Kayin states. It was felt by governmental and military leaders that a stronger military and governmental presence nearby might provide stability to those chronically turbulent regions. The official explanation for moving the capital was that Yangon had become too congested and crowded with little room for future expansion of government offices.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Naypyidaw is located between the Bago Yoma and Shan Yoma mountain ranges. The city covers an area of and has a population of 924,608, according to official figures.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Chaungmagyi Dam is located a few kilometres to the north of Naypyidaw, while Ngalaik Dam is a few kilometres to the south. The Yezin Dam is farther away in the north-east.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The residential areas are carefully organised, and apartments are allotted according to rank and marital status. The city has 1,200 four-story apartment blocks. The roofs of apartment buildings are color-coded by the jobs of their residents; Ministry of Health employees live in buildings with blue roofs and Ministry of Agriculture employees live in those with green roofs. High-ranking government officials live in mansions, of which there are about 50. However, in 2019, quite a few of the ministerial mansions were reported to be unused and left in a neglected state in overgrown compounds.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The city's Ministry zone contains the headquarters of Myanmar's government ministries. All the ministry buildings are identical in appearance. A parliamentary complex consisting of 31 buildings and a 100-room presidential palace are also located there. The zone also contains the city hall building, which has many characteristics of Stalinist architecture, but with a Burmese-style roof.


title: Naypyidaw

text: High-ranking military officers and other key officials live away from regular government employees in a complex said to consist of tunnels and bunkers; this area is restricted to the public. The city also hosts a military base, which is inaccessible to citizens or other personnel without written permission.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The government has set aside of land each for foreign embassies and headquarters of United Nations missions. The Chinese embassy formally opened its interim liaison office in 2017. The liaison office is the first foreign office to be permitted to open in Naypyidaw. Bangladesh and Malaysia have also signed agreements to open embassies in Naypyidaw. The government confirms that proposals have been put forward by 11 other countries to move their embassies to Naypyidaw, namely Russia, China, the United States, India, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey and Kuwait. In February 2018, State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi chaired a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Naypyidaw where she urged foreign governments to move their embassies to the capital.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The Hotel zone has a handful of villa-style hotels on the hilly outskirts of the city. There are twelve hotels located in or near Naypyidaw. Eight of these are located within the Naypyidaw Hotel Zone, and two are located in Laeway (Lewe) on the Yangon-Mandalay Road. Forty villas were constructed near the Myanmar Convention Centre in preparation for the 25th ASEAN summit conducted in Naypyidaw in November 2014. Construction of the villas was begun in 2010 by the government. However, funds were limited, so the project was later put out to tender for completion by private sector investors. A total of 348 hotels and 442 inns were constructed to house the athletes and spectators of the 2013 Southeast Asian Games, which was hosted in Naypyidaw.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Naypyidaw Myoma Market is the commercial centre of Naypyidaw. Other shopping areas include Thapye Chaung Market and Junction Centre Naypyidaw. Junction Centre is the city's first privately operated shopping centre. There are also local markets and a restaurant area.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Ngalaik Lake Gardens is a small water park situated along the Ngalaik Dam, near Kyweshin Village on Ngalaik Lake (about from Naypyidaw). Opened in 2008, facilities at the Ngalaik Lake Gardens include water slides, natural resorts, lodging and a beach. The gardens are open to the public during Thingyan holidays.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Also opened in 2008, the National Herbal Park has exhibits of plants having medicinal applications from all of the major regions of Myanmar. There are thousands of plants at the park, representing hundreds of different species. Behind the city hall, there is a park with a playground and water fountain complex, which hosts a musical light show every night.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The Naypyidaw Zoological Gardens opened in 2008 with 420 species and now with 1500 animals. The main attraction of the zoo is the climate-controlled penguin house. The animals were shipped to it from the old one in Yangon. The Naypyidaw Safari Park officially opened on 12 February 2011.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Naypyidaw also has two golf courses, Naypyidaw City Golf Course and Yaypyar Golf Course, and a gem museum.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Similar in size and shape to the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Uppatasanti Pagoda was completed in 2009. This new pagoda is named the Uppatasanti or "Peace Pagoda". The stake-driving ceremony for the pagoda was held on 12 November 2006. The invitation card for the ceremony opened with a phrase "Rajahtani Naypyidaw (the royal capital where the king resides)". The pagoda is just shorter than the Shwedagon Pagoda. Uppatasanti translates roughly to "Protection against Calamity". It is the name of a sūtra prepared by a monk in the early 16th century. It is to be recited in time of crisis, especially in the face of foreign invasion.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The Naypyidaw Union Territory is administered at both the State/Region level, and as a municipality at the local level under two different governing bodies. Naypyidaw is one of three cities in the country to have municipal governance, the others being Yangon and Mandalay.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Naypyidaw Council (NPTC) is the regional administrative body of the territory, and is under the direct supervision of the President of Myanmar. The council is appointed by the President, and must have no less than 5 and no more than 10 members and include both civilians and military personnel. The Chairperson becomes the ex-officio Mayor, and the Head of the General Administration Department (GAD) of the territory becomes the Secretary of the council. Matters under the jurisdiction of the Council include: general planning, coordination of internal security, nature conservation, emergency management, oversight of civil service organizations within the territory, and any other duties assigned to it by the constitution or law.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Naypyidaw Development Committee (NPTDC) is the local government body of the territory. The committee is appointed by the President, and must have at least 5 members, but no more than 9. The Chairperson of the Committee becomes the Mayor of Naypyidaw, the vice-chairman becomes the Vice-Mayor, and the Head of Office becomes the Joint Secretary of the committee. Because both laws make the chair of the Council and Committee the mayor, the same person holds both offices. Matters under the jurisdiction of the Committee include: urban planning, land-use planning, planning permission, traffic management, various public works (sewage treatment, water supply, sanitation, roads, bridges, drainage, etc.), and other local competencies. Unlike the NPTC which must request funding for its budget from the Union government, the committee is permitted to levy taxes to fund its work.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The current mayor is Dr. Maung Maung Naing, appointed as the Chair of Naypyidaw Council on 2 February 2021. Dr. Myo Aung of the National League for Democracy party served as Mayor from his appointment on 1 April 2016, until his arrest on 1 February 2021, during the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état.