I'm pleased to announce "Alomal-137 Epidemiology Case Study" is back...

[Neil]

Originally posted in 1997, it's now back in the fiction section again, and revised.

It's also online - http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dfxj658_75nfpzxt&revision=_latest

[Publius]

Sweet! Always one of my favorite fiction pieces on this site.

[capncnut]

I think I read this before, seems familiar. I'll have to go through it again.

Nice one.

[Slain]

Two things wasn't clear to me in your excellent story (maybe because I'm addle brained from CFS):

1. can people catch Alamol-137 pneumatically (pathongen piggy backing on a flu virus) and become a zombie without getting bitten?

2. there's mention in the story of a huge losses of life among the civilian population due to military action which greatly increases the number of zombies. Do people, that die from causes other than a zombie bite, rise from dead and become zombies like do in NOTLD and Dawn '78?

[Publius]

Two things wasn't clear to me in your excellent story (maybe because I'm addle brained from CFS):

1. can people catch Alamol-137 pneumatically (pathongen piggy backing on a flu virus) and become a zombie without getting bitten?

2. there's mention in the story of a huge losses of life among the civilian population due to military action which greatly increases the number of zombies. Do people, that die from causes other than a zombie bite, rise from dead and become zombies like do in NOTLD and Dawn '78?

Yes and yes. See the first sentence of section 2.1: "A-137 Human Positive (A-137HP) is a gram-positive, airborne vectored, non-virulent strain which has achieved 100% infection of all human samples, based on direct analysis by CDC #201G and information transmitted by other operational CDC, WHO and IRADC research facilities."

The virus is airborne and has infected all (or practically all) humans, so that anyone who dies will be reanimated. The document later specifically discusses the pathogen piggybacking on the influenza (flu) virus.

[zombieparanoia]

I'm really impressed by teh apparent level of technical research that went into it. Admittedly I'm a total layman and wouldn't know if that were all gibberish or what.

[Wyldwraith]

Well,
I just read Alomal-137, and I thought it was brilliant. The layout was incredible, and the detail and care given to the epidemiology was impressive. My only real complaint was that as usual it takes the stance that every national gov't is too stupid/incompetent to hold onto all but the most geographically favorable sites.

50,000 survivors worldwide seemed very low to me. I could buy 1-3 million as a worst-case scenario, but 50,000 means that the survival rate is around .02%.

Other than these minor gripes I give the work the undisputed title as the most technically savvy, and well-documented broad scope look at a zombie epidemic from start to finish.

In the future if you plan to update the work further could I suggest that you add more of the anecdotal examples of the various principles of the behavior of the reanimated? The document mentions extensive access to such anecdotal reports, but then doesn't elaborate any further on them.

I LOVED the emphasis given to the process of destroying one of the reanimated. The concept of the virus managing to restart its host with the remaining undamaged brain matter was intriguing, and I was glad to see the emphasis placed on the need to do *significant* levels of brain trauma to down a zombie.

Overall I give Alomal-137 4.5/5 Stars.