system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Bioshock] Could Rapture have survived if Plasmids were never developed?

We know that the development and use of Plasmids had a direct effect on Rapture's fall. Even if the Rapture Civil War was concluded quickly, having litteral super powered people who go insane with use, creates a very dangerous situation in a city bellow the surface.

If Plasmids were never invented, there would be no genetic arms race, no bands of insane Splicers, no Little Sisters. If Plasmids were never developed, would Rapture have survived? How would its lack have factored into the conflict between Ryan and Fontaine? How does its inexistance play out in Columbia's downfall? In other words, was it the invention of Plasmids that doomed Rapture?
gpt
Canonically it would likely have collapsed sooner, actually.

Rapture was by design a heartless cutthroat society- escaping "petty morality"was one of its explicit aims- and by location a society with no escape and a zero-sum game in terms of space and resources. This rapidly lead to problems- a massive wealth gap, extreme poverty and wage slavery, an elite that was comprised entirely of mercenary assholes and increasing class warfare between rich and poor.

This lead to serious worries of full-scale revolution a few years after founding - what likely stopped it was ADAM, acting as an opiate of the masses and boosting the economy enough to help the people at the bottom.

Columbia is a good example of the issue: its collapse had nothing to do with vigor or dimension travel, it was due to being an incredibly bigoted society that crushed large chunks of the populace until they snapped. Replace racism with classism, and same applies here.

The Rapture Civil war would have always happened- when most of the population are starving and the elite are throwing elaborate parties, how can it not? If it wasn't plasmids, something else would have brought them crashing down.