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Total Members Voted: 69

[Halfling]

Hm, since wood has no subtype, apparently either works. Actually, I just tested, [REAGENT:A:1:WOOD:WHARRRRRRRRGARBL:PLANT_MAT:APPLE_HLG:RAW_APPLE_TREE] works equally fine in fortress mode. I guess it's an extra comment field.

Kopout's original post of the reaction read
   [REAGENT:A:1:WOOD:LOGS:PLANT_MAT:APPLE_HLG:RAW_APPLE_TREE]
so someone must have changed it in an effort to fix the problem at some point, only to make it worse as apple tree structure is not actually raw apple tree.

[Putnam]

Is it STRUCTURAL? Because it certainly doesn't have to be.

[Halfling]

True. The apple tree raw as it is (as a result of several people fiddling with it) currently defines a material called STRUCTURE with my generic plant structure template. That STRUCTURE makes the tree itself. Then, it defines a second material, called RAW_APPLE_TREE which is also generic plant structure. Then it defines that that is the material dropped.

The anonymously attempted fix would have worked if
a) It had not used the vanilla token "STRUCTURAL" when referring to plant STRUCTURE in this case
b) the apple tree were designed more sensibly

but considering the trouble we've had with this, I say just fix the reaction.

[WillowLuman]

eating the brain raw should give you kuru, and so on.

Eating a human brain should give you kuru. People eat the brains of other animals all the time to no ill effect, the brain being rich in nutrients. It's cannibalism that builds up prions in the system, which is why prion diseases come mainly from the brains of humans (cannibal tribes) and cattle (factory farms feed the refuse parts of dead cows back to the living).

In European cooking, intestines are most often used as the skin of sausages. Maybe we should have sausage reaction requiring organs?

[Halfling]

True but false. Cannibalism is a good way of getting a prion disease because there'll be a whole lot of prions on an infected brain. Those don't actually originate from cannibalism. Eating dead ones doesn't cause the prion to appear AFAIK, just lets it spread in the population easily. Example: cats suffer from feline spongiform encephalopathy due to eating contaminated cow tissue, yet people don't feed cats to cats (nor people to people with vCJD). Most non-v CJD is sporadic and the sufferers of it have never eaten another person.

But I guess you would say it should give you painful dementia rather than kuru. And while the real rate is one in a million, in this mod's logic it should be always

[WillowLuman]

The prions originate from cannibalism, due to the digestive enzymes acting on the proteins within the flesh, and is more likely the closer related the eater and the eaten are. The prions can then pass to other species, but only if they've built up within the individual through a cannibalistic lifestyle, or in the population from extended cannibalistic behavior. Invetebrates do not develop prions from eating their own species, though.

We're used to the "choice cuts" being the only considered meat in our modern society, all haunches and sidemeat and thighs. In a simple agrarian society, though, people would use as much as the animal as they could in various ways (even the intestines are used, as sausage skin). The brain (rich in fat and vitamins) and the tongue (very tender) are delicacies in traditional rural English farms, and without large factory farms feeding the dead back to the living (because Americans think brains are icky), livestock didn't build up prions in their population back then.

Since most of the livestock here are invertebrates, eating the brain should really be no problem at all.

[Halfling]

I have no problem with your assessment of prion disease ecology. Most of them aren't transmissible to humans (afaik? who has eaten a cat or mink brain in a time when such a thing as diagnostics exist?). They are amplified in cannibalism because same-species transmission is more common. The fundamental biology though is wrong: http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/cjd/detail_cjd.htm#235903058 paragraphs 2-4 and 1st next ch. But that's it so, okay.

New animals could have any transmissible diseases you want to imagine though.

[Dorsidwarf]

Animal request: Thrip. Vermin animal , like a hamster, but that spreads a syndrome causing  something annoying, but not dangerous.

[WillowLuman]

November 24th, 109

I think I've finally gotten the beast trained, so we can let it out of its cage without it wandering off.

January 1st, 110

We've been here for an entire year now. It's been hard work, and we've gone without many things, but we've made it. Star made a statue to commemorate the occasion, which I've had installed in my office. It's rather nice.

Our home is cozy and warm, though a bit bare. This year I hope to get everyone their own rooms, to make people happier, and to build a roof over our workshops. Everyone else feels hopeful too, ecstatic even! Whelp put together a party to celebrate that we've made it this far.

January 23rd, 110

Leash Teastone, one of our former refugees, gave birth to triplets today! Her husband and her are blessed with the boys Past, Halfwit, and Chief. This place has become a new homeland now; there are hobbits whose land of birth is here, not back at our old home. Truly we have succeeded!

February 6th, 110

A massive group of Refugees arrived today, fully doubling our number once more! It seems the new beds won't be going to personal rooms after all, as the main bedroom will need more. I wish more of them knew how to dig, or thought to bring more shovels.

February 26th, 110

Trees! Trees have grown! We could not believe our eyes, we had almost lost hope. Of course we had to cut them down immediately, so badly do we need more wood, but they seem to be growing quickly.

March 11th, 110

They're back. We're currently building some walls on the surface, and there they are, the wild hounds. We keep throwing rocks, and we've badly wounded one of them, but they're taking far too long to go away. It's time to make some arrows.

March 13th, 100

The Elves and their Lords have returned, though I thought we had angered them. Perhaps we shall have better luck this year. And with them, our own merchants cannot be far behind. Well, good thing we have an amazing stonecrafter...

[StLeibowitz]

I have no problem with your assessment of prion disease ecology. Most of them aren't transmissible to humans (afaik? who has eaten a cat or mink brain in a time when such a thing as diagnostics exist?).

To the extent of my knowledge, prions are misfolded proteins that cause other proteins to misfold into more prions. They're not species-specific in the same way as viruses and bacteria; it's kind of like a biological nanobot plague, sorta. A prion gets in and starts catalyzing the folding of healthy proteins into more prions, regardless of the animal, which is why humans can get a variant of CJD from infected cow tissue and such. Kuru spreads because you've basically just swallowed a poison pill by eating the infected victim's brains - and nothing I've read anywhere has said anything about a link between a relationship between the victim and his/her eater and prions, and the same goes for prions being made by digestive processes, HugoLuman, so I'm a bit curious where you got that from.

Also @Hugo, I find your blame of factory farms amusing Scrapie, a very similar prion-caused disease in sheep, has been known since the 1700s, and tests have shown that environmental contamination through prion-containing dirt occurs. While factory farming animals and feeding them each other will definitely not help keep them healthy, they didn't cause the problem, and agrarian societies suffered the same issues with their livestock.

And I'm almost certain that if a giant bug ate another giant bug that was suffering from a prion disease, the eating bug would probably be infected as well. They don't have spines - they do have brains and other nervous systems that would be affected by and carry the infectious prions.

And on a completely unrelated note, your story reports are great Hugo!

[Timeless Bob]

So basically, "syndrome_class:Prion"?

[WillowLuman]

I don't think we should include Prions, because people want to make it "Eat brain = instant grey goo scenario," which it really, REALLY isn't.

Prions don't permeate the entire body and turn it into some kind of prion mush, they are misfolded proteins that only affect proteins of the same type. A misfolded protein bumps into a correctly folded protein of the same kind and causes it to become misfolded as well, and they aggregate into clumps, forming holes in the tissue around them. For some reason, the proteins which seem to become misfolded are those involved in the nervous system. Nerves permeate most of the body, so any tissue can contain Prions, but they become most concentrated in the spinal cord and brain.

Proteins become misfolded in the first place from genetic mutation, as proteins are what DNA affects directly. Species, and even individuals have different encoding for their proteins, so it is more likely to be transmissible between related individuals. They can "mutate" while inside the endoplasmic reticulum and golgi aparatus of cells, as these are where proteins are created and folded, thus creating prions that can affect other nervous proteins. They can then spread throughout a population after waste or dead tissue has decomposed into the soil, or from contact with discarded tissue, but ingestion of meat is a more reliable method. Thus, cannibalistic practices magnify transmission but are not the only way.

Invertebrate neural proteins are too different for vertebrate prions to destablize, and the mutations which cause prions aren't known in them.

[Putnam]

eheheh, the raws I posted up there included some vestigial spirit stuff from an earlier version of myomorphs. Imma fix that...

[Halfling]

I don't think we should include Prions, because people want to make it "Eat brain = instant grey goo scenario," which it really, REALLY isn't.

It's a different world, not this one. Obviously, since we have such things as monkeys and hominids, and few land-dwelling squid like this one doesn't now. It can have as many misfolded prions as it wants. Hell, it can have a misfolded protein that builds up in all tissues and is similarly infectious. But remember, you don't need to just say no because people may think differently, you can negotiate with the people about whether something's reasonable. I for one can say for my part it was thrown as more what you would call half of a joke in a subordinate clause as I did not actually expect prions to go in anytime soon and with the general deadliness.

Speaking of, if nobody wants to add prions then let's not be too concerned about their implications. I would assume that viruses could be modded first if there's one with fascination for transmissible diseases here.

[Gnorm]

Does anyone know exactly how civilized an underground civilization can be? I've been working on mine, and I am unsure of what to include in the entity raws, seeing as most of them are included only in the overworld civilizations in ordinary Dwarf Fortress.