Metal Gear Solid 5's secret 'nuclear disarmament' event has begun, Konami says

A secret event inside Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain can now be triggered, Konami has revealed, once a set of very specific conditions are met, one of them being the complete nuclear disarmament of everyone on the same regional server.

Nuclear weapons are owned and developed at a player's Mother Base, used as a deterrent against raids by other players. There are achievements and trophies related to both developing and deactivating these weapons. Evidently, Konami wishes to pursue nuclear disarmament, long a theme of the Metal Gear Solid stories, in a more comprehensive way.

If it sounds like it'll take forever to get everyone disarmed where you are, remember, the condition is only for your regional server, not across the entire platform. Although there, Metal Gear Solid 5 players have made great strides toward peace in less than a month, perhaps because data miners had found references to this event and cutscenes involving it about a month ago.

The number of weapons owned by PlayStation 4 gamers has shrunk to 349 from 2,761 since Nov. 1, for example. PC gamers' stockpiles have been cut in half over the same span, but there still are 15,206 nukes floating around on that platform. Konami is posting a running update on the nuke stockpiles through Metal Gear Solid's official Twitter feed.

These are the specific conditions for triggering this event, all words are Konami's:

• You must have completed Mission 31.
• You must not own or be currently developing a nuclear weapon. If you have any nukes in stock, you must dismantle them.
• Certain conditions related to nuclear proliferation must be met on the regional server for your corresponding gaming platform (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC(Steam)).
• All nuclear weapons on the regional server corresponding to your console or platform must have been dismantled. In other words, the amount of nukes on your platform's server must be equal to 0.

Konami adds that the event automatically triggers when a player returns to his or her Mother Base after completing a main mission. If a player develops new nuclear weapons afterward, the even can be repeated so long as those weapons are dismantled.