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Jose

8 (42.1%)

Ruby

11 (57.9%)

Total Members Voted: 19

[Fniff]

A small town might make things easy in the short term, but if it's quarantined there are unlikely to be enough zombies to break the quarantine and there's unlikely to be enough movement of people that we have a chance to get out before it happens.

Since I live in the UK I only have a vague idea of the differences between the cities, could someone clarify a bit? I'm tempted to say NY because I expect there's a lot of international travel but maybe we should focus on a small scale zombie apocalypse and I'm sure the other places have advantages.

OK, I'll tell you the differences.

New York:

Pros: Loads of people.
Cons: Very regulated.

Detroit

Pros: Loads of poor people.
Cons: The poor people may not be able to infect the other richer people.

Small Town

Pros: Spreads very easily.
Cons: Easily quarantined.

[arcadia]

@ Fniff: I'm completely intrigued by the idea of a hobo apocalypse. It's both a doomsday scenario AND a class struggle!

I'll elaborate on NY.

A ton of people (Fniff nailed it). I think the statistic is something like 8 million regular visitors and 18 million in the greater metropolitan area (including parts of Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, etc). Your biggest opportunity for getting people together (and spreading disease) would be through the train system (a la Grand Central) or Subway. This is if you start within Manhattan/ New York State is a whole different story. The problem is that people move very quickly through these systems and anyone who stops and wanders about would come off as really strange. The police also regularly stop and investigate suspicious characters. We'd definitely want to remove spastic or slow if we want to start here.

On the plus side, if we can get strong enough to nab one of the police officers, we can stop people to check their bags and use that as an excuse to spread the disease. It would be a total game changer. Re: international travel. There are 3 main airports, and they're all 40mins+ away from the city.

Comparatively, while SF is also a big city, there's a lot more driving involved there. You have way more pedestrians in NYC.

[Fniff]

@ Fniff: I'm completely intrigued by the idea of a hobo apocalypse. It's both a doomsday scenario AND a class struggle!

"We see them every day, we give them our change. We ignore them, and continue our daily lives. Little did we know, a little parasite will bring forth...

THE HOBO APOCALYPSE"

[Demonic Spoon]

Thiiiis! So much! It reminds me of the homeless people South Park episode.

[Fniff]

Thiiiis! So much! It reminds me of the homeless people South Park episode.

Except on a massive level, and they actually kill people and eat them alive.

If this was an actual zombie movie, people would praise it for it's interesting metaphor for the recession!

[Fniff]

Also, does this have to be set on a specific date, or can we determine it?

I'd love it to be set on a national american holiday, just for the image of a zombie being impaled by a American Flag on a pole.

[Strange guy]

Hobo apocalypse is definitely something I support. Can we infect animals? I'd like to keep the classic homeless man and his dog (does that stereotype apply to hobos as well?), though I'm against infecting small animals.

Also thanks for the city info, though now I can't decide what to vote for.

[Fniff]

Hobo apocalypse is definitely something I support. Can we infect animals? I'd like to keep the classic homeless man and his dog (does that stereotype apply to hobos as well?), though I'm against infecting small animals.

Small animals can get through a lot of crevices that a dog can't.

[GlyphGryph]

On the plus side, if we can get strong enough to nab one of the police officers, we can stop people to check their bags and use that as an excuse to spread the disease. It would be a total game changer. Re: international travel. There are 3 main airports, and they're all 40mins+ away from the city.

This would require your parasite being a hell of a lot smarter than it currently is. Right now it just knows "Identify. Attack. Eat." Because your parasite pretty much exerts control by ramping up aggression and hunger to overpower any other parts of the mind.

Can we infect animals?

Not right now. You would either have to develop a new parasite form or mutate your current form enough to manage both. Difficulty would be based on amount of control exerted over the animal, (passively hitching a ride on certain animals would be easiest), and the difference compared to humans, and the size (luckily, you are fairly small already).

[GlyphGryph]

Also, was their any consensus about the form our parasite was going to take visually? Spine wrapping meshlike creature, like suggested, would have been closer to the distributed parasite, though we can still be something attached to the spine instead of the brain.

Or we could be something that lives somewhere else and just exerts its control via chemicals. Pros and cons to both approaches.

[Strange guy]

Small animals can get through a lot of crevices that a dog can't.

Small animals aren't very flavoursome (as in don't fit zombification well, at least not to me, not taste) and are kind of cheap, since when infection is easy a small size doesn't change how dangerous it is to fight and there are all sorts of advantages like what you mentioned.

I support a more insectoid parasite living in the upper spine or brain of hosts.

[KaguroDraven]

I like my idea of a tiny tenticled creature that 'nests' in small hard to operate on parts of the brain, useing said tenticles to 'plug-in' to the host's brain.
Also, I vote Sanfranciso as people could mistake sweat we're useing for transmissions to be from lots of surfing or other exercise.

Rebellious -2
Unaware -1
Spastic -1

We should focus on total control of the host's before power.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Remove Spastic: -1
Remove Slow: -1
Remove Uncoordinated: -2

This. Let's keep Rebellious for now, my reasons being that it's sort of a fun weakness. We can get rid of it later.

I suggest that our parasite takes the form of a psudo-fungal growth in the corpus callosum, that hooks into the synapses of all four lobes in both hemispheres. This also makes rebellous more sensable, as the parasite might not be able to focus on controling the frontal lobe at all times in our current state.

[Fniff]

I am going for a creature that looks a lot like a blood cell (Or protein?) that hangs out in the blood supply.

Pros: You can go anywhere in the body, and thus evade detection.
Cons: May not have as much control over movement, thought etc.

Edit: Oh, yeah. How many points would it take for the parasite to have a will to survive? Having an offensive parasite works for a while, but after that it gets way hard.

[Mysteriousbluepuppet]

I am going for a creature that looks a lot like a blood cell (Or protein?) that hangs out in the blood supply.

Pros: You can go anywhere in the body, and thus evade detection.
Cons: May not have as much control over movement, thought etc.

You also wont have any control, and your parasite could get killed by blood loss ( pretty weak for a zombie)