[Ogrebear]

I found this simulator online and while Smallpox is not VITAS I thought it might be of interest: http://collapse-thedivisiongame.ubi.com/en/

Also given how quickly society collapses in the scenario presented (approx 30days) then how did the Shadowrun world survive VITAS? Esp in the West in heavily populated places like New York, London etc?

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Simply put, the writers in the 80's - hell, anyone in the 80's - didn't know as much about epidemiology as we do today, nor anticipate how insanely quickly an event on a pig farm in China can become a worldwide epidemic.

If you care to go for a somewhat coherent explanation, simply put it wasn't quite as contagious as everyone thought it was.  Given enough time, the CDC and the WHO can come up with an inoculation for almost anything - yes, even the viral nasties.  Problem with some of those is that the infection rate from the inoculation can be pretty dangerously high - 5+% - and when you have a plague that kills 80% of those infected, well, that means you have 10M * .05 * .8 = 400,000 dead in a metroplex of 10 million, just from inoculation.  Sure, it's better than 8 million dead, but it's still pretty horrifying.  However, the government will impose it, if it looks like something seriously nasty has grabbed a hold and is gaining speed.  And IIRC, the inoculation for VITAS had nowhere near such a tragic infection rate - which means First World countries with stable governments came through relatively unscathed.

In less stable places, governments DID collapse.  Entire towns were wiped out.  Sub-Saharan Africa really got the shaft.  Otherwise, well, see above.

[Wakshaani]

One of the best comparisons, in all honesty, is the SPanish Flu of 1918, of which we're overdue for a repeat of. That sucker blew up in about 18 months, killed more people than World War I did, and was so horriffic that society as a whole kinda came together and said, "We don't takl about this."


It damn near *vanishes* from the historical record, and getting info about it is still kinda tricky in some cases. For instance, it often turned people blue, or even black, as the victims had their lungs disolve and couldn't keep oxygen in their bodies. In other cases, the lungs would perferoate, and thousands of tiny airbubbles would leak outinto the body, moving around organs, until they'd come up under ths skin like blisters. Patients with this condition would make stuccato popping sounds when rolled over like rice krispees iin milk.

Society collapsed around the cities that were worst hit as people were terrified to go outside, gravediggers had a high mortality rate, and they ran out of coffins ... dead bodies were piled in the street, and trucks would come by, picking the corpses up with pitchforks, tossing them into the back, and dumping people into mass graves. It's kind of unimagineable for most of us in the modern age to understand the impact this had on people, but, again it was so terrible everybody just sealed the knowledge up and walked away rather than revisit it.

There are some amazing books about the period, My personal fave is The Great Influenza, by John M. Barry:
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Influenza-Deadliest-Pandemic-History/dp/0143036491/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456669386&sr=8-1&keywords=spanish+flu

Read that thing and you'll be just kinda going, "Guh."

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Staccato.  And Rice Krispies in milk ...

... man, you come up with the best metaphors for the sickest things. 

[MijRai]

Agreed, Wyrm. 

Yeah, nobody gives the Spanish Flu much notice, when it was one of the worst outbreaks of the 20th century (if not ever, though the Black Death has it beat).  It killed an estimated 3 to 5% of the world's population.  They called it the Purple Death because of those symptoms.  I only saw one mention of it in some military history books before I joined up; I learned more about it studying CBRN than anything else. 

As far as VITAS goes, you could treat it with tetracycline antibiotics, at least for the first strain.  A specific vaccine wasn't needed to treat those infected (and vaccines don't help you once you're sick anyways).  The problem was the massive infection rates.  People ran out of stocks immediately, people with connections started hoarding, etc.

Wyrm is right about Africa; the first strain of VITAS killed 75% of the continent's population.  One neighborhood of Lagos had a 100% fatality rate, and corpse-burning sites around the city are still the astral equivalent to nuclear dump-sites.  Feral Cities goes so far as to say it was more influential than the Awakening, possibly the most influential event in the last few centuries, and that people are flat-out paranoid of illness.  Sneezing in the wrong company can get your ass killed, and being a magical healer is practically a get-out-of-jail-free card due to the respect offered to them. 

[Wakshaani]

I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the African mortality rates are exaggerated, but, again going to teh Spanish Flu, there were situations in Alaska where it'd hit a village, the natives had no defenses, and while not everyone would fall down and die, everyone *would* become bedridden and sick. And after four to six days of not being cared for or fed, the dogs would break in and find no one able to defend themselves.

When rescue teams/medical personnel finally made it up there, they'd find whole communities without a single living person and only 1-3 dogs left, tugging over bones and scraps.

Africa likely saw some similar results, and also had a large exodus situation, where rumors of safe places would cause a lot of movement.

That said, I hope to explore the Ethomalian Territories more about this in the future. There, the plagues had lasting psychological effects where people retreated from flesh and the shamans who were able to use magic to cur ethings became modern priest-kings. Now you have a society where the less flesh you have, the more 'holy' you are, with cybernetic replacements seen as a GOOD thing, and the top of society are these people who  dress in long black attire topped with spooky masks.(You can see more about it in Chrome Flesh, plug plug.)

I'm a comedy guy, so I don't get to bust out the horror writing very often, but it's a nice change-up every now and then.

[Crimsondude]

Well, let's be honest. Darkest Africa is lazy as shit, but it's also as common in fiction as, well, the common cold. Shadowrun is no exception.

[Shaidar]

VITAS (Virally-Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome) was a virus inducing severe allergic reactions in those without allergies, many of the treatments used by allergy sufferers stood a good chance of increasing survivability by reducing the severity of symptoms.

Kind of a "the meek shall inherit the Earth" situation as it were.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Theoretically, yes.  Practically, however, no - because in a location where there isn't a network in place to properly distribute medical goods, there usually isn't the over-the-counter medication available to handle such minor issues.  Antihistamines (diphenhydramine is still the best) aren't generally going to be found in Third World villages - and even a pseudo-Seven-11 in a Third World city isn't going to carry much more than a few dozen packages - which will last only a certain amount of time, because these chemicals usually have a 4-6 hour stay in the body.  Which means the 'treatments' are easily as likely to prolong the agony as save your life.