Viral Transmission: Lingua Franca

[Guest]

http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=6875&p=69201#p69201

Viruses... viruses have changed.

In lieu of a horrid terror attack weaponizing a brand-new form of disease transmission, the viral terrorism community has learned of a dastardly evil new type of bacteria: one that propagates not only in the lung tracts but also in the vocal cords to which the bacteria respond to and rapidly reproduce when the vocal cords are "stimulated" or simply utilized in function. Pardon me if my biology is incorrect, this is literally my least strong suit and this is still fiction anyway.

Speaking, exhaling, coughing and such expels airborne flecks into the air, much more different and invasive than the standard airborne virus. Depending on the viral progression of the flecks that are coughed up or simply expelled by way of voice, they are either completely invisible (due to them being in their incubation stage), or only barely invisible (they briefly sparkle and are just about unnoticable, but are much easier to see with science goggles or some other type of goggles virology will get to detect sources of bacterial fleck contagions).

Fortunately, this isn't that horrific for potential of kill-death sorts of viruses. They will only respond to one type of language at a time when initially transmitted... unless, say, a trilingual human is infected with the initial Sol Common strain, and then they speak in Ceti Basic and in Tradeband. The bacteria will "learn" these languages and start to propagate on activation with those particular languages in certain hosts. So a specific ethnic cleansing of specific language speakers could easily develop into a station-wide pandemic where everyone is threatened.

And nothing is more fun than a station-wide near-lethal bioweapon outbreak threatening the life of everyone that speaks a singular language.

Thoughts?

[Owen]

I for one, like it. It is an interesting take on a future super disease. How would this work in-game though? A random event that causes it to spawn?

[Guest]

I'd say a few ways:

 

• Traitor can purchase a case of 'Hush' which is an already defined virus with certain conditions that are lore-friendly to the very first legendary speech-activated virus. 8 TC, of course, so it's expensive and forces you to commit on it. The case itself can be modified to irradiate its contents in order to pick your language of choice, such as Sikh' Maas for instance. There's also a risk of infecting yourself which will liably lead to your own death.
• Can be rolled via RNG for viruses. Generally more common as there will be a type of transmission for each language, but unlikely you will roll a specific one you want unless you get lucky.
  
• Random event causing it, naturally.

 

The flecks you see will be differently colored based on what type of language they are affecting only as an OOC indicator. White ones would be Ceti Basic, that weird puce color for Sikh'maas, a viridian for Sinta, so on. Getting within 1-2 tile radius of the fleck clouds depending on their viral progress will automatically infect you if you're breathing in the air without a gas mask and internals to filter it out.

[Loow]

This is just another Metal Gear post.

http://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/Vocal_cord_parasite

[Ornias]

This is just another Metal Gear post.

exactly

i love it

[Synnono]

The timeline of humanity...the suggestions to change revolvers and viruses...

It's all the work of the la li lu le lo!

But if this is a serious suggestion, no thank you! Viruses feel pretty easy to get already, as interesting as it is to target all the Siik'maas speakers, or all the warblers. Makes it far too easy to conduct ethnic cleansing as an ambitious virologist.

[Arzion]

SUCH A LUST FOR REVENGE

WHOOOOOOOOOOOO

I actually find this disease interesting, but it needs to be more noticeable in order to prevent it or find out the language it affects earlier on.

[Ornias]

I actually find this disease interesting, but it needs to be more noticeable in order to prevent it or find out the language it affects earlier on.

Agreed. It's no use if you can't even hope to control it because nobody knows its the language that triggers it. In MGSV, I lost 50 men before I figured out what was causing the illness. How are we going to avoid that here?

[Loow]

Meta.