Aberrant: Dead Rising - FAQ about the Z-Virus

[Dawn OOC]

Lethality

This table is designed to give you some idea of the vulirency of the Z-virus. The first column is stamina. The second represents how many hours it takes the first symptoms to appear. The final one is when natural death occurs, which is followed closely by reanimation. Reanimation occurs within minutes, at a rate of 7-the stamina score. Those who are dead before the virus can finish its run remain dead.

Stamina of Victim	First symptoms AI*	Death/Reanimation AI
1	5 hours	24 hours
2	10 hours	48 hours
3	15 hours	72 hours
4	20 hours	96 hours
5	25 hours	120 hours

This table represents averages. Variations for individuals should be considered; a normally healthy person with a Stamina of 3 who is sick with a cold will not last 72 hours.
*After Infection

Timeline

13NOV06 – Date of the first news reports about particularly virulent flu winging around the globe. The major concern immediately is the care of the people who come down with it almost immediately. Security measures are take world-wide, given that it began to pop up everywhere roughly at once.
14NOV06 – Panicked reports of ‘walking’ dead begin to circulate. Citizens begin to evacuate the cities, fleeing the close confines of large population centers. Most governments go into lockdown as their militaries work overtime to stop the menace. Major networks go to emergency screens at 7:00 p.m. EST.
15NOV06 – The first report of super-humans began to make the news, just as the mass media outlets began to completely fail. Those astronauts on the space station send home pictures of the blackened mass of Eastern Seaboard. These foreboding pictures hit the internet just before it falters and collapses.

At this point, things become regional. The first of the scavengers are already grabbing what they can; Walmarts are raided hard. The military branches hold out for a bit longer, but gradually loss through abandonment of post and the disease causes them to collapse as well.

General knowledge

The following can be learned by anyone by sheer observation and is assumed knowledge.

• Animals are not infected by the zombie virus, but it is assumed that they carry the virus if they survive an attack. The reason that this is assumed is that it’s 1) logical; 2) safer to be cautious than sorry; and 3) no good testing equipment is around.
• The mechanism by which the disease progress inside of the body is unknown. The symptoms are: flu-like illness, followed by a nasty, high fever and increasing difficulty in breathing, with a concurrent fall in heart rate. The final symptom is the ‘death pallor’ where the body begins to look slightly rotten while still alive. This last stage is the most painful, by eyewitness accounts.
• The infection is spread via any fluid or solid bodily contact. Spit, saliva, blood, tears, sweat, urine, meat, semen – all of these are vectors for the virus. Once the victim is dead, only the blood and spit seem to remain “fluid” in the zombie body, though the rotten meat is still virulent.
• Transformations in non-zombed humans have been wide and varied.
• There are creatures that are called “super-zombies” by the PCs that have powers similar in scale to the supers.
• Large-scale disruptions to the brains kill zombies.
• Zombies don’t need to breath or sleep. They have a need to eat which may indicate metabolism. Zombies have thus far been slow things.
• Zombies have the ability to track life forms over small distances. They seem to be able to sense life and will pursue it doggedly. They can sense it through walls/doors.

FAQ

Does it infect animals as well as humans?

Not by any verified report, thought the rumor is prevalent. The only PCs with any first-hand accounts are Primal and Bond in their fiction. To balance that, the cows seen in Chapter 3b appeared to be regularly drinking from water believed to be infected but were themselves healthy.

Are 'eruptions' a result of the virus? If so then the PCs are mutants, not novas.

Unknown, though Morgan Fox claims that he wasn’t infected before his transformation.

Is the result always a zombie or a nova? As an author could we take liberties with all sorts of fiendish infectious monstrosities?

There have been rumors of all sorts of things. Again, the ‘bear’ in the fiction is the only thing that has been witnessed to be like this.

Does it contaminate food and water?

YES.

Are 'powers' that result from the virus 'quantum' in nature?

There is no way to know. No instruments are available to test quantum; the PCs should only know that “a quantum” is is an indivisible entity of a quantity that has the same units as the Planck constant and is related to both energy and momentum of elementary particles of matter (called fermions) and of photons and other bosons.

Do the PCs actually possess 'nodes' or is the background simply a means of determining the potential output of a super?

The background has thus far been used only to determine output of a super. But someone like Priest would have the foundation to begin to explore this further.

Can you kill super-zombies with a head shot like a regular zombie?

By all appearances no. Dan shot one in the head in Chapter 11g: Schrodinger's Zed and it really messed it up but didn't put it down.

I imagine this will generate a lot of questions about regional knowledge and so on, and I’m happy to work with you on this.