Miranda
Population Migration / Travel
2506
1
1
Advertisements for settlement on the new, distant world of Miranda at the far edge of the system begin to circulate. As new worlds have been deemed ready for colonization for centuries now, the news is overshadowed by the much greater tensions between the Anglo-Sino Alliance faction and the growing Independent Faction movement. However, thirty million people answer the call and begin to settle there. Unbeknownst to them... (caution: major spoiler for the film Serenity )
the Alliance mixes a chemical called the Pax into the air processors in an effort to curb aggression. The chemical is too effective, with the majority of the population becoming so passive that they eventually die. However, a tenth of one percent of the population have the opposite reaction, becoming uncontrollably violent. The Alliance sends a team to investigate what happened on Miranda, but they are all killed on the planet. One scientist survives long enough to send a message with their findings, along with a few of the images they had recorded of the dead, but she is killed in the midst of sending the signal. (Mal says that the signal is "about twelve years old.")
The Alliance suppresses the secret of their failed experiment on Miranda, along with any record on the Cortex of the planet's existence. Rumor spreads that Miranda is a black rock, where the terraforming didn't hold, and that just a few settlers died.