It isn't a fun setting, for it's a setting where conflict is commonplace to the point that people are used to it, idiots with more ideology than sense are willing to turn entire metropolitan areas into areas where death awaits
In setting, of something like this shows up, shit is going to go down:
Why do you ask? Because memetic weapons/hazards are a thing and the various factions have entire departments dedicated to searching and destroying memetic ordinance every day. Memetic warfare is quite similar to other forms of warfare in that there are plays and counter-plays, measures and countermeasures. Modern memetic weapons are required to be 'tuned' to their targets, the faction they're being deployed in, and whatever countermeasures they will face. This has predictably caused several generations of weapons and countermeasures to come into being and evolve. However, this hasn't stopped these weapons from becoming problematic, period. It also didn't help to improve the current state of affairs either, and the current state of affairs is thanks to the deployment of the first genuine weaponized memes thanks to Russia. Due to the variety of memetic weapons and how they evolved, memetic weapons are classified by their medium of transfer, if it targets the consciousness or subconsciousness, and 'generation'. This has allowed the civilian population to properly react to their deployment if there is a breach (usually by the use of things like mind-altering drugs/substances to 'muddle' the memetic in question).
The Generations are:
Generation 1 (Gen1): The crudest and most basic memetic weapon in human history. They were originally developed by Russia during the Putin regime in the 2010s and first revealed to the world in the 2016 Brexit vote and the US 2016 Presidential Elections as part of a wide-scale world destabilization operation only known as 'Operation Deep Fifty', an operation whose description is essentially 'soak the world in gasoline and then lite it on fire'. This generation is known to simply 'convince' the consciousness of the target(s) to do whatever the memetic wants them to believe... and oddly enough the easiest to counter and neutralize due to the heavy reliance on frames of reference and mentality proximity for its effectiveness.
Generation 2 (Gen2): The second generation of memetic weaponry and -surprisingly- vastly more sophisticated. While the majority of the afflicted tend to be simply 'convinced' to do whatever the memetic wants them to do or believe in, this starts to show the mind control esque properties of memetics in general as a tiny (<2%) of the afflicted effectively have no free will. Despite these improvements, it shared the same problems as it's predecessor in terms of effectiveness, and thus was the second to be rendered neutralized. This was created by the successor of Vladimir Putin, one Grigor Ilyanich Stoyanov, and his administration is directly linked to the infamous 1st Ruralist Insurrections -which killed hundreds of millions of people worldwide- and other conflicts that were created to ensure that no one would be able to attack Russia -later ZAFTRA- before it was ready.
Generation 3 (Gen3): The second generation introduced memetic's ability to take away people's free will to small populations, but Gen3 memetic weapons managed to up this to give one about a 30% chance of the afflicted to have their free will taken away. First introduced by various warlords and maniacs in the various developing Lawless Zones across the planet in the latter half of the 1st Century NWE, the Gen3 memetics was a genuine surprise to memetic weapon experts at the time. This generation of memetic weapons is particularly infamous as it was partially the cause for the 2nd Ruralist Insurrections, which killed millions of people worldwide. At the time of NWE 0340, Gen3 memetic weapons are only partially neutralized, and the current cure for those who have their free will taken from them is simply to, effectively, put them out of their misery...
Generation 4 (Gen4): The fourth generation of memetic weapons is a frightening one when it was first introduced during the late 2nd Century NWE, and for good reason. It is infamous as it is well known to have the ability to effectively take free will entirely. Despite much research, at the time of introduction, the only 'cure' for those afflicted is to simply kill the afflicted. Like the previous generation, there is no one group or person that is responsible for its development, but there were signs that a transhuman that went by the name of Caulder Stolos had a hand in a few of these...
Generation 5 (Gen5): Currently the ultimate memetic weapon in existence bar none. Designed by one Caulder Stolos as an anti-civilization weapon, it is essentially designed to eliminate free will completely to those that are afflicted and has been called 'the closest thing to Warhammer 40k Chaos Bullshit without the space magic' by various anti-memetic groups, which isn't far from the truth, as it targets not only the consciousness but also the subconsciousness. However, to do this, Gen5 weapons abandon any and all sense of subtlety when being unleashed and thus able to be quarantined. A few thousand have to be killed due to being afflicted, but that's better than having millions be killed off in a 'ten innocents will die so we can get the afflicted' style rule.
The current state of memetic warfare is one where attacks come and go in nanoseconds, requiring augmented individuals and AGIs with in-built anti-memetic systems to 'man the walls' so to speak... and the current situation of these 'memetic warfare divisions' and the various memetic weapon creators/users in the various Lawless Zones across the planet is best described as a 'stalemate'. Before Gen5 memetics came into the field, anti-memetic capabilities were slowly but surely ensuring that the only place you can learn about these is in the history books, but that changed when a transhuman named Caulder Stolos introduced to the world the first Gen 5 memetic weapon and caused several mutual genocides in the process in several Lawless Zones. Whenever he arrives in a populated location, he generally leaves only bodies in his wake for his goal of removing civilization entirely...
So, here is some more lore for you guys. I've talked about my setting and memetic weapons, now I'm going to tell you about something that every faction has effectively agreed to be worthy of literal on-site execution: the Mind Jack (common name).
The Mind Jack is a system designed by the mad post-human known only as Caulder Stolos (who is currently at large) in a bid to annihilate civilization in every form. A Mind Jack completely invalidates the concept of Free Will and a constant threat to the well-being of sentient lives at large. Elements of the Mind Jack are also used in 5th Generation memetic weaponry, making it even more problematic.
Given the widespread distribution of Stolos's proxies and his memetic attacks allowing for their proliferation, the only punishment for even having one of these devices is on-site execution at the very minimum... with some factions making the family on the execution block as well to ensure that no one uses these willingly.
How the Mind Jack operates is simple in concept: it is a technological replication of psionics, but able to completely rewrite a person's mental state (something that psionics can't do). Building upon a firm understanding of neuroscience and psychology, it uses electromagnetic systems to reprogram a sentient being. Its range is limited, however, as it's maximum range is 100 meters and it's effective range is only a tenth of that (10 meters). Effectively, it is a near-instantaneous version of Mass Effect's Indoctrination or the technological version of scopolamine (a drug with similar properties). This can allow the user to make the person do anything they wish from making the person in question be an idiot to making scandals like clockwork to turning people into literal suicide bombers who would die for the cause to make even the most fanatical fanatic look like cowards.
It should be noted that this is one of the technologies that got amended into the Sol Accords as a banned technology, only to be researched to find a way to counteract its effects. All nations enforce this ban under the pain of death. The only sentients immune to this technology are either techno-organic or quantum-based AGIs and psions, with the former due to being AGI and the later due to how the technologies of the mind jack interact with psionic energy.
This is a prototype of a SolForce Mechanized Line Infantry Squad:
It is a prototype but gets the point across. 15 men total; 12 of which are foot-sloggers and 3 of the men man the IFV. Each SolForce soldier is equipped with power armor, armed with ETC-FLARE small arms (usually an assault rifle firing a 12g FMJ-style round mostly made up of an Iridium-Osmium alloy core... or 24kJ or ~a fifth more than the 800 gr (52 g) Barnes round (20,195J/20.195kJ) at a cyclic rate similar to the M16) or 125kJ output pulse free-electron lasers (which have about 29.88 grams of TNT going off on the target), and enough explosives to wreck pretty much everything up. This is partially due to how armor evolved since 2016 when the predecessor of EndoSteel(TM) was revealed to the world, giving armor, in general, a Battletech vibe... just not as paper-thin as the setting implies. Explosives of the setting are 4.76 times as potent as TNT, to give you an example a 120mm mortar round (HE) has an explosive filler of 6.59 pounds of Comp-B or ~2.99kg of the substance (with a TNT equivalent of 1.33, this means that each mortar round is the equivalent of ~3.98kg of TNT). This means a similar round with in-setting explosives has an equivalent explosive filler of ~18.93kg of TNT. To put things into perspective, the modern 155mm howitzer shell that the US uses only has 10.8kg of TNT with a charge liner attached, thus a mortar round has about 1.75 times the explosive capabilities of such a massive shell...
Given that most factions utilize power armor to even their rear-echelon forces, this level of direct firepower is a requirement. Those that don't either utilize full-conversion cyborgs out the wazoo, use cloned genetically and cybernetically enhanced meatshields, or a combination of the two if they're a minor player. With fragmentation being far harder to use, their equivalent kill radius decreases immensely. To give an example, the M67 grenade has the equivalent of 239.4 grams of TNT stuffed into it, the SolForce equivalent of it has ~1139.54 grams (or, to put it bluntly, ~1.13 kilograms) of TNT equivalent, utilizes an iridium-osmium alloy fragmentation case, and has a kill radius (and no casualty radius) measured in 25 meters against modern power armor. Against our soldiers? The kill radius is measured somewhere between 4 to 6 times the previously stated kill radius with a casualty radius going another 2 to 6 times again depending on the circumstances.
The power of the setting's weapons is just insane in comparison to ours, this is partially due to how militaries developed over the years and how widespread genetic and cybernetic augmentation changes how powerful weapons need to be to function. This made building materials, in general, stronger, easier and faster to procure and manufacture, or both depending on the faction. Think of Israel's rocket proofed buildings as a basic standard and go up from there...
