it looks like blame! timeline is:

biomega->noise->Blame!->blame!NSE

i mean it looks like biomega is the story about the outbreak of the virus, that causes the "trouble" a few 100 (or 1000?) years later in the Noise and Blame! world.

What exactly is the N5S disease?

Is it a wetware (nanotech) disease or is it entirely organic?

I read Biomega and the I know there was a N5S outbreak on Mars first, but where did it originate from and how?

i think i've read somewhere that biomega is NOT related to the blame! universe (unlike nse)

I don't think they're related myself despite the THI reference. But then again events in Blame! trancend space and time at points so perhaps they coexist in interlinked universes. But that's as far as I'm willing to push that

I'd say it's impossible to tell if Biomega is related at this point, but at the very least it has similar characteristics.

I sure think it is, even if you take out the Toho Heavy Industries reference. Why? No reason. No factual reasoning, anyway. To me, it just looks like the sort of world that can turn into what we see in Blame!

I mean, the DRF will still be doing massive damage to the earth, and can there for really change society as a whole. It's obvious to me, that since the Safe Guards in Noise weren't known to the public as a whole (Or so it seemed, and definitely to Musubi), they were dormant. Not actively seeking out any threats, and that people as a whole didn't have control over them. Otherwise they would have done what Killy is trying to do, use their Network Genes to tell the Governors to stop the Safe Guards from killing humans, and only focus in on the newly spawned Silicon life. (I don't believe the Network Implants talked about in Noise, are the Network Genes so talked about in Blame!) So that tells me, that maybe at one point, the Safe Guards were invented to defeat a threat (N5S Virus? DRF anyone?), and very few people were left with Network Genes, due to the near Apocalyptic results of the last Safe Guard movement, and whatever threat there was.