*Nods* Omnivirus

[Omegalith]

What can a composite viral disease do, out of curiosity?

[Forgotten Entity]

Kill everyone and convert them into mutant freaks of nature?

[FarBeyondC]

What can a composite viral disease do, out of curiosity?

Hmm...

90% chance of death, combined with insane propagation and the ability to kill your defenses against it?

Humanity's dead.

And that's using real world viruses.

[Omegalith]

Hmm...

90% chance of death, combined with insane propagation and the ability to kill your defenses against it?

Humanity's dead.

And that's using real world viruses.

Well yes, it could kill everybody. (Though as Despotellis is Sentient, I doubt it would be stupid enough to eliminate it's entire food source)

I'm more interested in specific abilities though.

Really, I reckon it could do pretty well in the arena.

[FarBeyondC]

Well yes, it could kill everybody. (Though as Despotellis is Sentient, I doubt it would be stupid enough to eliminate it's entire food source)

I'm more interested in specific abilities though.

Really, I reckon it could do pretty well in the arena.

I've never seen a sentient real world virus (not that that means anything).

Influenza can apparently completely reshape itself (and apparently does this every year).

Chicken pox is apparently a ninja- with extreme patience.

Other than that, I got nothing.

[The Transient Guest]

I'm still trying to figure out if this is limited to real world diseases......because I understand some fellow named Nurgle a few grimdark's over does some nifty stuff with disease.

[Omegalith]

I'm still trying to figure out if this is limited to real world diseases...

No.

...because I understand some fellow named Nurgle a few grimdark's over does some nifty stuff with disease.

I'm thinking Viruses specifically here.

I'm pretty sure at least some Viruses are meant to be seeded Tyrannid Vanguard Organisms, ja?

[big_adventure]

Just talking virii - you could combine 3 real-world virii and kill a huge portion of the population:

Ebola - 99% mortality, extremely contagious - it doesn't do too well in terms of mass kills, since it kills too fast, stopping it's own spread, so add...

HIV - she's slow, she's patient, and is nearly impossible to resist naturally. The long, long gestation means that the comp virus has time to massively spread, since you are contagious well before being symptomatic. The only problem now is making the virus spread even more easily, since most hemoragic fevers are poorly airborne and HIV is absolutely non-airborne, so add...

Common cold - the classic, super-mutating, insanely contagious airborne virus.

You could sub in viral pneumonic plague to get an even higher mortality rate than Ebola (or anything else - it's something like 99.9% mortal), but you wouldn't really need it.

Just those three, if you cherry-pick their "best" attributes (6-month to 1-year+ gestation, high mortality, easy transfer) and, depending on where the outbreak starts, you'd take out a significant fraction of the human population.

[Omegalith]

Again though, I'm well aware it can kill everyone in the real world. I'm more interested in interesting traits and abilities it may have, and how good an arena/scenario combatant it may be.

[HVulpes]

What can a composite viral disease do, out of curiosity?

Are fictional viruses included? Cause it might be deadly... until you realize it has the luck virus in it which makes people lucky enough to avoid death even if it's 99.99999999+ % deadly. Plus it makes you irresistible to the opposite sex, charismatic and perky as a Morning DJ. (Posi-viruses from Red Dwarf).

[Omegalith]

Are fictional viruses included? Cause it might be deadly... until you realize it has the luck virus in it which makes people lucky enough to avoid death even if it's 99.99999999+ % deadly. Plus it makes you irresistible to the opposite sex, charismatic and perky as a Morning DJ. (Posi-viruses from Red Dwarf).

Right, well we have Despotellis (Self-aware virus who can depopulate a planet in a day who has a Sinestro Ring) with the T and G viruses (Allowing it to reanimate it's victims as mutant slaves with healing factors)... Plus it's also a high-end probability manipulator.

Plus all the normal Ebola/HIV/Influenza type stuff.

Oh dear.

[big_adventure]

Again though, I'm well aware it can kill everyone in the real world. I'm more interested in interesting traits and abilities it may have, and how good an arena/scenario combatant it may be.

Well, a real virus has no intelligence, no will, no "anima", no "strategy" or anything like that. They don't think - they aren't even cells and don't have enough structure to be "active" in any sense. They don't have cilia or tails or tentacles or anything to let them any action, and they lack anything to direct such functions. They have no ability at all to convert anything into usable energy (no mitochondria, no chlorophyll, no enzyme reactions, nothing). They totally lack transportation of their own. All they are is a strand of RNA encapsulated in a protein sheath. That protein sheath has a "socket" on it that lets it attack one (usually) specific receptor on one (usually) specific kind of cell. Once it's in an organism, the virus will connect to its target receptor through contact, and through it the RNA strand enters the cell. That strand, due to normal cellular activity, will enter the nucleus of the cell (in an animal virus) and connect to the appropriate piece of DNA, changing the cell into a virus factory. The cell stops doing what it used to do and starts producing viruses. Eventually, the cell explodes and the viruses escape, and they continue the process on other cells.

Depending on the code length in the virus and the sensitivity to errors, the virus might or might not mutate significantly, it can work quickly or slowly, and it will always cause some kind of immune system response.

This immune response, in simple terms, means sending certain kinds of cells to the infected area to coordinate a response. Such a response usually involves creating keyed antibodies to the virus.

When your body makes antibodies, it is basically creating things that attack the virus by duplicating the receptor, therefore neutralizing it.

This is why HIV is a right pain to deal with - a very important part of immune response is the Helper T cell. This cell functions to coordinate responses. HIV specifically attacks that cell, meaning that the efforts your body takes to fight HIV just fuel its growth.

Vaccines work by injecting an inactive form of the virus in question into the body, causing the immune system to create keyed antigens to the live virus. This is one reason that certain vaccines cause flulike symptoms - your body is fighting a non-existant infection, and this often causes fever and dehydration, those result in fatigue and "aches and pains."

Given that, "real" viruses can't strategize or effectively participate in combat. A person with a stock of nasty stuff could use them in combat, but they would not work remotely fast enough to be useful in a fight - I'm not aware of any viruses that can affect an infected host in less than hours. Cellular processes just aren't that fast.

[Omegalith]

Well, a real virus has no intelligence, no will, no "anima", no "strategy" or anything like that. They don't think - they aren't even cells and don't have enough structure to be "active" in any sense. They don't have cilia or tails or tentacles or anything to let them any action, and they lack anything to direct such functions. They have no ability at all to convert anything into usable energy (no mitochondria, no chlorophyll, no enzyme reactions, nothing). They totally lack transportation of their own. All they are is a strand of RNA encapsulated in a protein sheath. That protein sheath has a "socket" on it that lets it attack one (usually) specific receptor on one (usually) specific kind of cell. Once it's in an organism, the virus will connect to its target receptor through contact, and through it the RNA strand enters the cell. That strand, due to normal cellular activity, will enter the nucleus of the cell (in an animal virus) and connect to the appropriate piece of DNA, changing the cell into a virus factory. The cell stops doing what it used to do and starts producing viruses. Eventually, the cell explodes and the viruses escape, and they continue the process on other cells.

Depending on the code length in the virus and the sensitivity to errors, the virus might or might not mutate significantly, it can work quickly or slowly, and it will always cause some kind of immune system response.

This immune response, in simple terms, means sending certain kinds of cells to the infected area to coordinate a response. Such a response usually involves creating keyed antibodies to the virus.

When your body makes antibodies, it is basically creating things that attack the virus by duplicating the receptor, therefore neutralizing it.

This is why HIV is a right pain to deal with - a very important part of immune response is the Helper T cell. This cell functions to coordinate responses. HIV specifically attacks that cell, meaning that the efforts your body takes to fight HIV just fuel its growth.

Vaccines work by injecting an inactive form of the virus in question into the body, causing the immune system to create keyed antigens to the live virus. This is one reason that certain vaccines cause flulike symptoms - your body is fighting a non-existant infection, and this often causes fever and dehydration, those result in fatigue and "aches and pains."

Given that, "real" viruses can't strategize or effectively participate in combat. A person with a stock of nasty stuff could use them in combat, but they would not work remotely fast enough to be useful in a fight - I'm not aware of any viruses that can affect an infected host in less than hours. Cellular processes just aren't that fast.

Well yes, but Despotellis.



Having a fully self-aware virus who's a Sinestro Corps member bypasses all the normal reasons why a Virus couldn't meaningfully compete in a rumble fairly neatly.

[HVulpes]

Well yes, but Despotellis.



Having a fully self-aware virus who's a Sinestro Corps member bypasses all the normal reasons why a Virus couldn't meaningfully compete in a rumble fairly neatly.

You also have Leezle Pon, the sentient Smallpox virus Green Lantern combined with Sinestro Despotellis.... can we have a mental break down?



http://greenlantern.wikia.com/wiki/Leezle_Pon

Also assuming the Rest of the Corps don't get counterparts like they did for Sinestro Corps and GL corps (I have a sentient virus, you have a sentient virus. We have a sentient location, you have a sentient location---Mogo and Ranx, not sure of spelling of latter. Etc...)

[big_adventure]

Well yes, but Despotellis.



Having a fully self-aware virus who's a Sinestro Corps member bypasses all the normal reasons why a Virus couldn't meaningfully compete in a rumble fairly neatly.

Oh, of course, that's why I prefaced everything with "real virus".

To be fair, one of my biggest pet peeves in fiction is turning viruses into sentient beings. Never mind that giving a virus what it would take to be even slightly sentient stops it from being, you know, a fucking virus.

Why oh why not just call these sentient things protozoa or SOMETHING that has the required "stuff" to act/react/think.

Sorry, wayyyyyyy too much time spent in bio labs.