docwithablog | storyline one.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hm. And what if your priorities were less about personal suffering and more about ensuring a fatal spread amongst the population?

You tell me why I'd want to do that and I'll tell you what my answer would be, in that case.

Thought experiment: male, 45 y.o, recently divorced. Sees his children every weekend. Good relations all around, no obvious private conflicts. Works an office job full-time, earns enough money to live a comfortable life, so on, so forth. Unfortunately, beneath it all, he suffers from illusions of grandeur as well as psychotic paranoia; he believes he's being monitored by the government through radio-waves and is plotting to take out as many people as he can to prevent those in power from turning the general populace into mind-controlled slaves. He needs to work fast, as he believes he's on a schedule.

So?

That is completely absurd, but okay. I'm playing.

He should get himself infected with the Spanish flu, because although Smallpox is more aggressive, it is also more visible and short-lived. If he gets the flu, he'll be able to spread it around for the full duration of its incubation time and once he needs hospitalization, he'll require extensive care that might infect a whole number of people, important people might I add, during a very long sick period before, finally, time of death.

Smallpox would give itself away much quicker, that's true. Physical symptoms, pretty hard to mistake for anything else.

But then, we have his illusions of grandeur. Going out on a flu-like disease wouldn't be very dramatic, would it. Prolonged but ultimately, uninteresting.

Smallpox bumps and sores are hardly grandiose. They're pus-filled and leave, honestly, quite terrible scarring.

Though, admittedly, if his aim is to kick the bucket anyway, scarring probably wouldn't deter him.

I suppose it depends on his vanity. Haven't thought about that - let's say he isn't vain. Slightly squeamish about pain.

All symptoms of Smallpox are distinctly painful or uncomfortable. Like I said, nasty disease.

Spanish flu is more like a pneumonia raised to the fifth power. No doubt painful, but subtler about it.

Edited 2020-04-17 12:59 (UTC)

Spanish flu it is, then. All we need to figure out is how he gets hold of it.

And Sarah's back from her 20 minute bathroom break, so I'll leave you to figure that out on your own.

If she knows how to get hold of a vial's worth of Spanish flu, get back to me.

storyline one.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject