Tynus original career choice was clothes designer and when he was posted to Fosforon he decided to take personal charge of the dress code, working from a "nature did it first" principle with the protective clothing…(Oh God, does this explain Avon's outfits? He is used to worse.)
Brilliant! I think I’ll now make this part of my personal fanon :D
The fact that the virus only kills space-faring humans could have had interesting effects if it had become an epidemic
Now that I think about it, a selective fast spreading virus that kills quickly makes no sense as the cause of a galactic plague! For one thing, the plague might burn itself out without intervention, given that you need people to be alive to spread a plague far and wide. There will also be a lot of people unaffected and this may make it difficult for the virus to spread from one vulnerable group to another. There will also be plenty of people around to enforce quarantine, communicate a warning to others and try to combat the plague. I doubt a slower spreading virus would do much for the drama, mind you and I’ll ignore what I'm saying for the purposes of discussion!
a selective fast spreading virus that kills quickly makes no sense as the cause of a galactic plague Yes, very true. Now, if it had had an incubation period of a few weeks or longer, during which people were infectious without showing symptoms... That would have been really dangerous. Of course, it might be possible that non-space travellers still carry the infection in non-lethal, symptomless form, in which case they would still act as transmitters and also see to it that the virus stays in circulation in the populations over longer time-scales, to prevent humans from simply taking to space again after the plague has run its course.
OTOH, space-travelling humans would be the only ones that the aliens would actually have had the opportunity to study, so the question is, would they even know that planet-bound humans would be unaffected?
...or it could be that we misunderstand their intentions entirely. Maybe viral infection is simply how they communicate, and the rest is all unfortunate side-effects... ;-)
Brilliant! I think I’ll now make this part of my personal fanon :D
The fact that the virus only kills space-faring humans could have had interesting effects if it had become an epidemic
Now that I think about it, a selective fast spreading virus that kills quickly makes no sense as the cause of a galactic plague! For one thing, the plague might burn itself out without intervention, given that you need people to be alive to spread a plague far and wide. There will also be a lot of people unaffected and this may make it difficult for the virus to spread from one vulnerable group to another. There will also be plenty of people around to enforce quarantine, communicate a warning to others and try to combat the plague. I doubt a slower spreading virus would do much for the drama, mind you and I’ll ignore what I'm saying for the purposes of discussion!
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Yes, very true. Now, if it had had an incubation period of a few weeks or longer, during which people were infectious without showing symptoms... That would have been really dangerous. Of course, it might be possible that non-space travellers still carry the infection in non-lethal, symptomless form, in which case they would still act as transmitters and also see to it that the virus stays in circulation in the populations over longer time-scales, to prevent humans from simply taking to space again after the plague has run its course.
OTOH, space-travelling humans would be the only ones that the aliens would actually have had the opportunity to study, so the question is, would they even know that planet-bound humans would be unaffected?
...or it could be that we misunderstand their intentions entirely. Maybe viral infection is simply how they communicate, and the rest is all unfortunate side-effects... ;-)
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