Stand Alone Suggestion: Secondary Infection, the invisible killer!

[DayZoey 110]

So I just recently had a thought while discussing some essentials and non-essentials with some friends of mine for a zombie apocalypse and wanna know what didn't occur until the subject of handling food with poo covered hands? (From lack of toilet paper after pooing)

Secondary infection. It was by far the biggest killer due to fevers, liquid bowels and violent shivering that tired the body out for a nice and tidy one-two-three knock-out for most soldiers during the medieval era of combat that was a slow and miserable way to die. This has me thinking; we're in a zombie apocalypse so modern medicine and house-hold supplies aren't readily available unless looted from a store. This combined with all the promised makeshift weapons and actual weapons designed for combat whose wounds go untreated for too long would make for a slew of different diseases one could catch simply by scraping their elbow on a rusty nail or shooting someone with an arrow that had recently been used to kill a zombie or had been recovered from the dirt.

Just a few of the problems and relative solutions that I can come up with...

Bacterial infection: results in a fever that gets progressively worse if left untreated for too long, though not communicable among other survivors, it would make running, climbing or even getting up a task too difficult to carry on for very long. Within a few hours of game time, treatable with hydrogen peroxide, Iodine or Alcohol. After a few hours, antibiotics and heavy fluid consumption are required (whilst under effect of the fever, hydration meter drains twice as fast). If left for more than seven or eight hours in game, cold sweat makes the body temperature of the player raise to dangerous levels and character's pooping animation is replaced by diarrhea and water meter drains three times as fast and gets progressively worse unless treated with antibiotics or water/health drain becomes too rapid for a player to keep up with and they die.

Tetnus/Rust infection: I'm not sure what the effects of Tetnus is but I do know that it can be severely deadly if not treated within a certain time frame, take away our hospitals where it can be treated when past that window and it becomes especially dangerous. Obviously can be caught by swimming/drinking very unsanitary water or by being struck with a rusty cleaving weapon.

The common cold: Not really a big one because they are rarely deadly. Extremely communicable and unless proper precautions are taken, can develop to pneumonia which is very capable of killing someone if not cared for properly. Initial symptoms would of course be a cough and maybe the water meter drains at an accelerated rate of 120%. Easy enough to care for, if cough syrup/drops are used then the communicable nature of the disease is more or less eliminated (though can pass through food/drink if handled by infected character) despite cough medication. If proper clothing is worn (warm clothes, infected survivor is kept dry and has proper rest or inactivity to keep stress on the body to a minimum) then the disease will take care of itself. However, poorly clothed and cared for survivors that don't take the proper steps to manage their symptoms would develop a whooping cough that starts by decreasing the distance they can run before being out of breath in half and progressively gets worse. Also being forced in to coughing fits (also coughing could give away position to zombies) which they can only move at a walking pace while suffering, possibly even throwing up (draining food meter to 0) due to violent nature of the coughs and dehydration gets much worse. The only real cure for this is proper care, rest and food/drink.

Just some ideas :3

[GOD™ 2795]

I believe some of these are already going to be in the SA.

Edited March 28, 2013 by GOD™

[HKilf 15]

Yeah, I think similar content has already been confirmed for SA but I like the way you think Sir. You have my beans.

I am a bit worried though that this will encourage sick players to camp more. Like lying ontop of a building with a shitbucket and bottles of water...

[roykingtree 125]

Yeah, I think similar content has already been confirmed for SA but I like the way you think Sir. You have my beans.

I am a bit worried though that this will encourage sick players to camp more. Like lying ontop of a building with a shitbucket and bottles of water...

As oppoosed to what, running around and having PVP deathmatches?

[Perigrin 105]

RUSTY ICEPICK TIME

stab, run, stalk until target dies of tetnes lol

good idea though

[DayZoey 110]

Yeah but if Rocket is serious about making the game harder, water and food will be much harder to come by. I danno if he's going that in depth but if you poop without toilet paper and without wiping with -something-, you get horribad rashes between your buttcheeks. So that could be another factor, toilet paper will be mountain money in DayZ.

Though tetnus shots are incredibly common, you can buy them at a pharmacy so there's no reason to think that raiding a grocery store wouldn't have a really high chance of finding tetnus shots and such. I also find the rarity of Antibiotics as it is baloney, antibiotics are probably the most common drug out there next to cold medicine and they've been mass produced ever since someone figured out how to make them. I think that's why the human population has reached such a high, people aren't dying off from fevers due to bacterial infections anymore. Not in the droves that they used to.

And yeah, if Rocket makes the game harder to survive in I sincerely the amount of deathmatching going on will be cut down substantially. I still don't understand why people play DayZ to deathmatch, I really don't. Arma 2 works just fine as a military game to shoot people in and if not, there's tons of other shooters out there that you can accomplish the exact same thing in but spend not even a third of the time gathering the equipment to do it.