The forum is now archived and available for reading only. To find older posts, you can use a search engine.
If you need assistance, you can contact our Support or use Steam discussions, Discord or Reddit. Thank you.

Post Reply 
Famine Plague
08-08-2014, 10:44 AM
Post: #1
Biohazard Famine Plague
Hello fellow mad scientists and mad grad students,

I'd like to suggest a famine plague so that by altering the humans metabolism the infected now need insane amount of food for sustenance. This results in famine and uprising of humanity to claim food reserves leading to anarchy and (dramatic pause) ... ... canibalism (ok almost everyone who played a survivalgame considered that so...back to topic)

[Note] I noticed my post was a little all over the place so i summed up the main points. My arguments and reasons are in the section bellow as my original post.

Germ: parasitic organism that consumes large amounts of the energy a human gets from eating

Symptomes:
a) infected gets hungry again short time after eating (severity)
b) parasite releasing hormones to induce hunger (severity)
c) agonizing hunger drives the infected to look for all kinds of foodsource (crossing landborders/ violent outbreaks/ severity/ small rise in lethality)
d) by altering brain chemistry the parasite lowers the moral standards leading to cannibalism and murder for food (big rise for lethality in infected and noninfected)

after this the event that poorer countries attack richer ones could happen

Abilities:

- parasite produces enzymes that help optimizing digestion (decreases severity but keeps your hungry army from dying before they could start an uprising) obesity in rich countries increasing
- parasite induces the build-up of muscle tissue by releasing steroid hormones, making the infected stronger but more aggressive in their search for food (especially in rich countries)

Transmission:

I would stick to the original transmission tree like with the normal parasite already in the game. Maybe change the animal transmissions so that bats replace birds and the second perk unlocks carnivorous and omnivorous animals attacking humans to spread the disease.

Cause of death for humanity: after depleting all reserves and eating everything alive in sight the few remaining humans will starve.

[Train of thoughts from original post]

As for the culprit causing symptomes I would really like to see a parasitic organism for a pretty simple reason:

A parasite will consume a part of the energy you consumed as food to reproduce. Pretty much like a tapeworm that people even implant intentionally to loose weight (pretty neat idea apart from the danger of cancer in the infected area of the colon.)

A virus/bacteria/fungus on the other hand does not consume enough energy but rather causes fevers and intense sweating. While maintaining a higher temperature will tire your body and uses up energy reserves this is not what I was looking for since you will die of fever long before you start an uprising to get all the tasty bratwurst, fish&chips or burgers (guess the rich countries I was refering to)

The plague will have to increase the combat abilities a bit, otherwise the weak and starving could never rise up. On the topic of a hungry army: It will only get effective as soon as a rich country with military power gets infected. A poor country with next to no weaponry capable of winning in a fight against anti-person drones won't be a smart place to start your uprising.

Thanks for reading Big Grin and I am open to suggestions
Find all posts by this user
Quote this message in a reply
Post Reply 


Forum Jump:


User(s) browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)