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The Rules For The Infected In The World Of For Those In Peril On The Sea
1. The mutated rabies virus that creates the infected is passed from person to person through bodily fluids. This includes things like blood and saliva. It can only be passed if the skin is broken and some bodily fluid from an infected get onto it. It cannot be passed on by swallowing bodily fluids (it would be destroyed by stomach acid - unless a person had something like an ulcer that could let it into the bloodstream before this happened), or through contact with mucosal linings of the body (this means things like breathing it in, or it getting in your eyes), unless this is already damaged (such as might be the case for the nasal passages of regular users of drugs such as cocaine). While the most usual route of infection is from a bite, there are other possibilities. If the infected have bodily fluids on their hands or under their nails, something as simple as a scratch that breaks the skin would be enough. Similarly, if a person has an existing open wound and bodily fluids from an infected get into it, this would be enough to pass the infection on. Finally, like many viruses, it is capable of surviving for some time outside of the body. Therefore, it is possible that the infection could be passed on if a person cuts themselves on something that has dried bodily fluids, such as a machete that has been used to kill an infected, on it. 2. Unlike the real rabies virus, the version in this world only affects humans. It cannot infect any other animals, and cannot be passed on by them. 3. When someone is infected, there is a period between then and when they will turn. This period can vary in length from a few seconds to up to twenty-four hours. There is no survival, unturned, after infection for more than this time. Most people infected will turn within the first few minutes. This latency rate is determined by an interplay between three factors: 1. How much of the virus they were exposed to; 2. Where on the body they were infected; 3. The strength of their own immune response. A person exposed to a large viral load (i.e. through a lot of body fluid getting into a wound), that is wounded on the head, neck or torso and that has a poor immune response (e.g. a child or an elderly person) will turn almost immediately. A person exposed to a small viral load (e.g. just a few drops of bodily fluids), on a peripheral part of their body (e.g. fingers or toes) and that has a good immune response (e.g. a young, healthy adult) would have the best chance of surviving the full twenty-four hours.
5. The infected are just humans with a disease. This means that they can only be capable of what the human body is capable of. However, since they are single-minded in their pursuit of the uninfected and don't feel pain or empathy they can operate at the maximum capacity of the human body. This means that they can run faster and appear stronger, than you might think a human might be capable of, much in the way that an athlete on steroids would, but these abilities are not super-human. 6. As stated in rule five, the infected are just humans with a disease. This means that they will be killed by anything that would kill a human (a shot to the head, being stabbed in the heart, being run over by a car, drowning in water etc). However, since they don't feel any pain, they might not be slowed by less lethal injuries that would have normal people rolling around screaming (so don't try kicking a male infected in the groin in a bid to get away, he won't notice - even if you do it hard enough to do certain things serious damage!). 7. With rabies comes a fear of water, that's why one of its other names is hydrophobia. In this world, this is less a fear than a reluctance to enter water unless they know it is shallow enough to easily get through (i.e. nothing deeper than a couple of feet at the very most) and if they can sense that some uninfected human is near that they are compelled to attack. 8. The infected retain no consciousness, they are simply operating on innate instincts. This means that they can't work out how to get round any obstacle that requires any kind of thought. For example, to get through a door, they can push it open (if it swings that way), or break through it, but they can't work out how to turn an handle to open it, or indeed work out if they need to pull rather than push. They can scramble over things, but they can't climb. Similarly, while they can run (an innate human instinct), they can't swim (a learned behaviour). 9. If infected fall into the water, they will usually drown because they cannot swim (see rule eight). This makes the water much safer than land. However, this is not always the case. If an infected falls into the water but finds something that floats that it can grab onto, it can survive for long periods of time. Similarly, if they are in a life raft or on a floating object, they can survive. The same applies if they are wearing a flotation device of some kind, like a buoyancy aid. Such infected as known as drifters and form a major threat to those living on water in the world of For Those In Peril On The Sea.
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Whether you wish to write a
story set in the world of For Those In Peril On The Sea, or if you're just interested in learning a little more about the
world in which it's set, these are the basic rules under which it operates. In
general, it's the real world, only with a mutant virus in it that creates
infected. As a result, all usual rule of the real world apply. More specific
rules for the virus and the infected are provided below. These dictate
important issues relating to how the virus spreads, the course of the infection,
what the infected are and are not capable of, and how they can be killed.
4. Once someone is
dead, they remain dead. There is no re-animation of corpses in this world. In
this sense, the infected are not true zombies, just zombie-like creatures. This
means that if a person is injured badly enough by infected attacking them, they
will die through the usual processes of shock and blood loss. This means that
most people attacked by infected will die rather than become infected. There are
exceptions to this though. If someone is attacked by a single infected, they
have a chance of fighting it off. Similarly, if there are infected
attacking a large crowd, they may go into an attack frenzy, meaning that they
get distracted by all the people running around them. This can mean that attacks
on individual
people are short and non-fatal as the infected is drawn to other people running
away before it finishes any one attack. This attack frenzy is the main way that
a lot of people can become infected at once, and can create hordes or swarms of
infected in a very short space of time.
10. When uninfected
humans are not near, infected people enter a form of stasis that uses very
little energy. This means that they can survive for very long periods on very
little food. Like a cold-blooded animal, one meal might be enough to see them
through many months. However, they cannot survive on no food and will
eventually starve to death if they don't eat. Infected primarily like to eat non-infected humans,
even if they have been long dead. They will also catch and kill animals like
cats, dogs and birds if they are really in need of food. Whether they will
attack and eat each other rather than die from starvation is not clear, and it
might be that some infected become cannibalistic on their own kind to survive
times when there is nothing else to eat. Infected sense uninfected humans
through their usual senses, however the range of these is somewhat diminished.
Eye sight seems limited to detecting movements and distances of up to 500 yards,
but no further, Noise it detectable over a similar range. Smell would operate
over a few tens of feet and means that they can tell if uninfected people are
within structures such as buildings or cars.