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Rabies


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Survival Rate = 0%

The headline is not strictly true, since records have been kept there have been 6 people who have survived a rabies infection without post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), as described by the CDC. Of those 6, all were treated through induction into a coma. All had brain damage, 4 had extensive brain damage. No one has been recorded as surviving if left untreated. Imagine a disease with 100% fatality rates. It's incubation period is thought to be 2-12 weeks but can be longer, as in several years. As of this moment, infection is almost always through a bite or contact with bodily fluids that get into the mucous membranes or open wounds.

Rabies kills 55,000 people a year. However, more than 15 million people a year are treated for it, preventing another 300,000+ deaths according to WHO statistics. It is a painful, wretched death that usually occurs within two days of onset of symptoms. In the final stages, when hydrophobia sets in, usually caused by fear of the inability and pain involved in swallowing liquids, the patient is probably hallucinating, having lucid night terrors and moving into delirium.

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Imagine rabies, aerosolized or causing the human vectors to bite other humans, with a one day or less incubation rate and a life span of two to three days for the host. Lots of authors have played with the idea, as have movies. Quarantine and its original version [REC]; 28 Days Later (though said to be an Ebola variant in the comic); The Crazies (Code Name:Trixie) in both its original and remake versions are film nods, while The Totem, by David Morrell; Rabies by Borislav Pekic; Dogs by Nancy Kress (though the violence is mostly committed by infected dogs and uninfected humans); and Rant, by Chuck Palahniuk, are some good books to start with.

Rabies works great in a horror rpg. In a superhero setting it would depend greatly upon the mood. Likewise for thrillers or fantasy games, it all depends upon the campaign setting. Most superheroes don't fight disease. People still die of cancer in Superman's world and there are, to my knowledge, very few superheroes who heal others. Superheroes seem tailored to problems that can be solved with violence or action than with long range problems such as health, pollution, war and economic apocalypse. Again, I could just be unaware of some great superheroes who take a longer range view of human suffering.

There's something about a town that turns on a visitor and upon itself, leaving the infected as violent opponents, who cannot or will not be cured, that creates stark ethical problems. Kill them? Restrain them? Try to find a cure? Romero deals with the issue in his zombie movies (he did The Crazies also), perhaps none so much as Survival of the Dead. Each approach has problems; what do you do if someone you restrain still manages to infect others? Are you now ethically guilty for additional deaths?

The Dogs, by Kress, introduces a twist on the ethical problems, by playing off USAnians, united by their love of the their dogs against the government, who is trying to kill the dogs, infected or not. Kress's book posits the best attack against USAnians may not be an attack on the people but rather their pets, creating turmoil and death, and nearly a civil war. Humans might be willing to turn themselves in for treatment, but how many of us would be willing to kill our pets on the off chance they might become infected?

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