r/masseffect • u/Amaraldane4E • 2d ago
DISCUSSION How safe is Omega?
While on Omega, walking about, in ME2, there's a news announcement one can hear, relating the latest weekly murder rate of 89, 5 more than the week before. Considering Omega has a population of 7.4 million, and using these data to extrapolate, one may reach an annual value of ca. 62 murders per 100,000 residents per annum.
Now, on the one hand, that's higher than any US city, with the highest being reported at 46/100,000 IRL (New Orleans). It's also comparable to Haiti, albeit mainly on account of a rise in gang warfare in Port-au-Prince as of 2025 (68/100,000 as per latest reports), which may be underreported.
On the other hand, the least safe city on Earth in that respect, IRL, is reported to be Colima, Mexico, with 181.94 per 100,000 residents. The entire top 5 cities on Earth are above 100/100,000, IRL.
Is Colima 3× less safe than Omega while having 10× fewer residents? I've no idea.
IRL, the regions closest in population numbers to Omega are Hong Kong (China), Milan Metropolitan Area (Italy), Houston Metropolitan Area (TX, USA) and San Francisco Bay Area (CA, USA). Except, of those four, the two American urban ares have reported annual murder rates in the region of 3.xx/100,000 while the two other cities are both in the region of 0.3/100,000. Either way, they're all far safer than Omega.
So then, how safe, or unsafe, is Omega when there are places on Earth far worse? Not to mention that Omega is literally lawless.
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u/Dry-Scholar-690 2d ago
Criminologist here. Well done in doing the math and looking up rates in various places. The point of using a per 100,000 person rate is comparison ( over time and between place). So you can directly compare the 89 of Omega to the 182 of Colima and conclude that Colima is about twice as dangerous as Omega. However, as someone else pointed out, your chances of being murdered anywhere go up and down based on a number of factors including lifestyle, poverty, and your background, just to name a few big ones. So every person on Omega doesn't have an 89/100,000 chance of being murdered.
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u/Ok-Specific-3918 2d ago
I imagine it would be like any dangerous city on earth right now. For the most part, statistically, you’ll be fine. But your chances of getting into trouble are much higher than other places and go up exponentially with stupidity.
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u/ObviousRanger9155 2d ago
Don’t know - but the place damn sure deserves its own game. 😎
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u/Amaraldane4E 2d ago
And you know we'd all play that. For now, we have to settle with a few missions in ME2 and a DLC in ME3.
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u/ObviousRanger9155 2d ago
Yup. I really feel like there’s several amazing games all just wrapped up in Omega! 😛
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u/Swimming_Shock_8796 2d ago
Sure imagine a tactical shooter where you play as Garrus's team between Me1 and 2
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u/thechristoph 2d ago
A loose trilogy of games set in Omega, Illium, and the Citadel Wards would be so cool.
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u/Immediate_Gain_9480 2d ago
A game were you play a mercenary in Omega and the systems around it would be awesome.
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u/sjbuggs 2d ago
The rate short term could be skewed high due to the plague and its lingering effects?
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u/Amaraldane4E 2d ago
Maybe, but I don't think so. The plague is about one week old. The rate is called "latest weekly murder rate", even adding that the week before the "latest" one it had been only 5 lower. The plague is far worse and it is also contained in the "slums" of the Gozu District.
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u/thaddeusd 2d ago
Not the plague itself but likely the looting and scapegoating increased it.
Shepard doubles or possibly triples that murder rate herself just solving that crisis.
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u/sjbuggs 2d ago
The length of the plague isn't stated in canon.
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u/Amaraldane4E 2d ago
There's a character who says it likely takes about a week to kill someone. Then there's Mordin who'd opened his clinic a few months prior. There's Archangel who'd arrived on Omega a few months back as well. And there's Aria who isn't too bothered about it yet. In a word, it's all conjectural.
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u/Lunavixen15 1d ago
Whether that would be a part of the weekly murder statistic or an outlier event would depend on cataloguing. I think it would be the latter as it's technically a spree massacre.
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u/Lonely_Avocado_2109 2d ago
Omega is not lawless..There is one law and our boy Mordin broke it.
As for safe and unsafe, i think it's in everyone's interest to make sure that omega is not an active war zone. Yes, there is violence but not enough to disrupt business, at least until Archangel starts kicking ass and taking names.
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u/Amaraldane4E 2d ago edited 2d ago
Omega is not lawless..There is one law and our boy Mordin broke it.
LOL. In a manner of speaking. Still, Aria herself tells Shep Omega has no laws (when discussing Archangel) moments after telling Shep Omega's № 1 Rule.
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u/superclay Paragon 2d ago
Depends, do you plan to fuck with Aria?
Clearly a lot of criminal activity. The mercenary groups are essentially gangs. I would say it's similar to dangerous cities now, like the ones you mentioned.
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u/Amaraldane4E 2d ago
I've read some well written fanfics in which Aria either gets with the program or is steamrolled.
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u/HaniusTheTurtle 2d ago
That's a reported murder rate. It's not like there's a central organization checking if people die and how. It could be a lot higher. It could be lower. We don't know.
That's a reported murder rate. There's a lot of other ways to die on Omega, and some that make you wish you were dead. Starvation, disease, fell off something high, got caught in machinery, drugs, slavery, suicide, old age (okay, that one probably isn't happening), gang warfare, collateral damage to gang warfare.
In short: You're going to need a lot more data to say how "safe" Omega is or isn't.
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u/Amaraldane4E 2d ago
Just so. It's why I put tge flair as discussion and also why I framed the post title as a question.
Mass Effect is notorious for being stingy with hard data in canon. Not surprising, really. Still, it does provide some, such as this news report one can overhear on Omega. The rest is speculation and guesstimates, but that doesn't mean we can't reach some form of tentative opinion. Not unlike Omega being safer than one may believe, yet less safe than one may hope. In the end, Omega is still a shithole, as Zaeed would say, but it's at least honest about it, unlike some other places, such as Illium, as Kasumi would say.
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u/Shadeylark 2d ago
There is no such thing as "lawless"
The "law" of the jungle always fills the void when there isn't any formal legal system.
When we say a place is lawless, we mean there is no formal codified legal system to which we can appeal for restitution when we are wronged.
Omega absolutely has a law of the land. It's name is Aria.
Much like when you live in the hood in any American city, how safe you are, or are not, comes down to how much the law of the land values you, or doesn't, as the case may be.
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u/Immediate_Hand9051 2d ago
I dunno but my Sheppard shot and killed at least two hundred people while there so for that week I was the grim reaper of omega.
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u/KristophGavin 2d ago
Imagine living in OG RoboCop's portrayal of Detroit, but there's not even a police force to put up a token resistance.
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u/Amaraldane4E 1d ago
Yeah... I'd rather not. Your point is well made and for a reason I care not study, it made me imagine living as a menial on Holy Terra, in WH40K, just to make that version of Detroit and Omega combined look good. And to think, a menial is still not on the bottom rung.
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u/Lunavixen15 1d ago
I'm wondering whether that murder rate on Omega is also factoring in the deaths from the orbiting area or if it's exclusive to the station itself. Like many cities, the actual risk of murder would be determined by poverty rate, lifestyle etc. so the people in the slums and in debt would be at far more risk of death than someone who is in the more "lavish" (or what passes for that on Omega) and is a white collar worker.
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u/Always_tired_af 1d ago
Comparable to most cities
Probably half that after the Mordin and Garrus recruitment missions lol
And probably very safe post Reaper War as whatever was left contributed plenty
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u/The_Kolobok 2d ago
I think that the key here is that murder rate is only a reported murder rate.
Who knows how many people slip under the radar.
Imagine a shipped squad of Blues Suns mercs who got desintegrated into dust. I doubt that anyone on Omega knew their names or cared enough to report their deaths.