The Optimal Zombification Promptitude

[Poof]

Of course distance of the bite from the brain determines the variable rate of time to zomber.

[Naraku4656]

(っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ i don't like zombies ♥

[stilgar]

5 minutes ago, Naraku4656 said:

(っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ i don't like zombies ♥

It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

[Poof]

6 minutes ago, Naraku4656 said:

(っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ i don't like zombies ♥

I knew I could count on you

[RainyDayJizz#35]

I think of it like a blood disease so at least a day. Shit, I should have voted 8 to 48.

[Poof]

9 minutes ago, RainyDayJizz#35 said:

I think of it like a blood disease so at least a day. Shit, I should have voted 8 to 48.

Most people liken it to rabies which is actually not a blood disease. It's only in the saliva and genital secretions but not urine just the sexual secretions. Then when you get bit by a rabid critter, it doesn't spread through your blood, it travels thru your nervous system to your brain, taking 1-3 months.

Of course the zombie virus doesn't have to be like rabies. It could be a blood disease.

And it doesn't have to be realistic. I was actually thinking about what's scariest when I made the poll. I should've made that clear. Realistic answer are nice too tho

[Raptorpat]

I started replaying through the resident evil games a few months ago and it seems very arbitrary how different the rates of infection worked. Especially because of resident evil zero, where edward dies and turns in the span of like ten minutes in-game time.

[BlackNoir]

Within the hour has always been my notion, and I base that off RE time....10 minutes of in game I feel like constitutes about an hour......Otherwise, speedrunners take down umbrella in about an hour or less....Which seems completely farcical.

The real question is how long before a Crimson head mutation.

[Poof]

1 minute ago, Raptorpat said:

I started replaying through the resident evil games a few months ago and it seems very arbitrary how different the rates of infection worked. Especially because of resident evil zero, where edward dies and turns in the span of like ten minutes in-game time.

Does that bother you? It bothers me how arbitrary infections can be in the zombie genre. It's been a long time since i played any REs I can't really comment 

[HardcoreHunter]

I'm in the camp of hours to days. Mostly depends on how long it takes for the infection to kill them before it makes them turn. I did like how it was shown in dawn of the dead the most though. Rogers character slowly degrading and mentally regressing. It was more impactful than Cooper's daughters death in Night of the Living Dead where she got bit and just went catatonic for 8 hrs. 

 

[new_disease]

I'd guess maybe a day, up to a week depending on the health of one's immune system to delay the spread of the infection.

Plus I think that would make it a little scarier. Long enough for you to still chug along while slowly getting worse and worse, knowing the end is near. Wondering if you should end it now, or if you're with a group if you should wait for you to turn so you won't be mentally self aware while they take you out. 

Edited August 26, 2020 by new_disease

[Poof]

7 minutes ago, Radical Left said:

Within the hour has always been my notion, and I base that off RE time....10 minutes of in game I feel like constitutes about an hour......Otherwise, speedrunners take down umbrella in about an hour or less....Which seems completely farcical.

The real question is how long before a Crimson head mutation.

There's a chart!

[HardcoreHunter]

7 minutes ago, Radical Left said:

Within the hour has always been my notion, and I base that off RE time....10 minutes of in game I feel like constitutes about an hour......Otherwise, speedrunners take down umbrella in about an hour or less....Which seems completely farcical.

The real question is how long before a Crimson head mutation.

I always got somewhat that bites don't count so long as they aren't in a cut scene in terms of infection. Also RE gets a little confusing with how it's wanted to treat it's zombies. They've tried to retcon them into not really being undead, since they wanted people to embrace other b.o.w's. They just made it that the metabolic rate goes into overdrive to an extent that it begins to breakdown the body making them appear to be zombies. Crimson Heads are an advanced stage of metabolic acceleration. Except they forgot about that in the remake when they just have zombies crawling around missing half of their body. 

[lupin_bebop]

Multiple categories for me.

[Poof]

4 minutes ago, HardcoreHunter said:

I'm in the camp of hours to days. Mostly depends on how long it takes for the infection to kill them before it makes them turn. I did like how it was shown in dawn of the dead the most though. Rogers character slowly degrading and mentally regressing. It was more impactful than Cooper's daughters death in Night of the Living Dead where she got bit and just went catatonic for 8 hrs. 

 

Personally I like longer periods of time like that too, and I agree going catatonic is pretty lame

[Distortedreasoning]

i think 1-10 minutes is plenty of time. 

[Poof]

6 minutes ago, new_disease said:

I'd guess maybe a day, up to a week depending on the health of one's immune system to delay the spread of the infection.

Plus I think that would make it a little scarier. Long enough for you to still chug along while slowly getting worse and worse, knowing the end is near. Wondering if you should end it now, or if you're with a group if you should wait for you to turn so you won't be mentally self aware while they take you out. 

Yea too quick is like scary in the sense that your group is more vulnerable to being overrun, but slow and gradual is more horrific to me.

Oooo that reminds me. Should ppl have a chance to fight off an infection or is a bite guaranteed death/zombie?

[Poof]

5 minutes ago, lupin_bebop said:

Multiple categories for me.

I felt like it should be multiple choice since more than one choice might be suitable or ppl could think of a wider range like 10 minutes - 8 hours or something

[HardcoreHunter]

Dumbest thing introduced in Day of the Dead and later used in the Dawn of the Dead remake was that Zombie will only eat humans. I thought that was dumb as hell. I think Romero had his head up his ass for that period. After that line in Dawn of the Dead gained popularity "when there's no more room in hell the dead will walk the earth". He changed the zombies to be more of a divine retribution against humanity. In Night of the Living Dead it was just from radiation brought back to earth from a Venus Space Probe. 

[lupin_bebop]

10 minutes is too quick. The world would be overrun in literally less than a day.

[new_disease]

2 minutes ago, Poof said:

Yea too quick is like scary in the sense that your group is more vulnerable to being overrun, but slow and gradual is more horrific to me.

Oooo that reminds me. Should ppl have a chance to fight off an infection or is a bite guaranteed death/zombie?

Mhmm too quick isn't as scary to me. I think I'd go as far as 2 weeks but anything more than I'd think that gives one enough time to fully go through the stages of grief and accept their fate so that wouldn't be as scary in the end for the one that was bitten.

I'd say they could have a chance, depending on where they get bit they could fight it off through amputation or maybe even just excising the part of the flesh that was bitten. But for the excisions that would be assuming that you get clear visual cues of how far the infection is currently, like if the flesh starts turning a different color or starts oozing or something. 

[HardcoreHunter]

Anyone else pre-order the dawn of the dead 4k blu-ray set? Or am I the only zombie nerd that will dish out $100 for a movie. 

[Poof]

4 minutes ago, Distortedreasoning said:

i think 1-10 minutes is plenty of time. 

I'm at a dilemma. If it's too fast, it's less horrific since being sick and getting to the end quicker is probably what we all would want instead of it being a long drawn out sickness (unless you needed more time for something critical) and too fast limits the ability of the disease to spread. Like 1-10 minutes would mean you could conceivably limit the disease to one continent bc ppl wouldn't be asymptomatic and getting taken aboard boats or planes. Unless someone purposely brought zombies over. Also harder for it to infiltrate a safe zone. But then once in a safe zone, faster is definitely the worse situation.

Too slow, and it's like ok a zombie got in our city, it bit 3 ppl before we killed it. Now we have plenty of time to quarantine those 3 ppl and we'll be fine.

[HardcoreHunter]

1 minute ago, lupin_bebop said:

10 minutes is too quick. The world would be overrun in literally less than a day.

Pretty much how the dawn of the dead remake film did it. As well to the lesser extent 28 days later films. It's fine for action, but there's no suspense in it for me. It's like someone gets bit and had enough time to yell fuck, then someone tries to treat them and they instantly turn and bite them. There needs to be time for that shit to sink in. 

[Poof]

7 minutes ago, HardcoreHunter said:

Dumbest thing introduced in Day of the Dead and later used in the Dawn of the Dead remake was that Zombie will only eat humans. I thought that was dumb as hell. I think Romero had his head up his ass for that period. After that line in Dawn of the Dead gained popularity "when there's no more room in hell the dead will walk the earth". He changed the zombies to be more of a divine retribution against humanity. In Night of the Living Dead it was just from radiation brought back to earth from a Venus Space Probe. 

I never took that line to heart or that they were divine retribution unless the canon actually specifies that. To me a character mentioning that doesn't really make it so.

I totally forgot the told us the origin in Night of the Living Dead. I forgot all about the space probe radiation...

[Distortedreasoning]

7 minutes ago, Poof said:

I'm at a dilemma. If it's too fast, it's less horrific since being sick and getting to the end quicker is probably what we all would want instead of it being a long drawn out sickness (unless you needed more time for something critical) and too fast limits the ability of the disease to spread. Like 1-10 minutes would mean you could conceivably limit the disease to one continent bc ppl wouldn't be asymptomatic and getting taken aboard boats or planes. Unless someone purposely brought zombies over. Also harder for it to infiltrate a safe zone. But then once in a safe zone, faster is definitely the worse situation.

Too slow, and it's like ok a zombie got in our city, it bit 3 ppl before we killed it. Now we have plenty of time to quarantine those 3 ppl and we'll be fine.

yeah im pretty much hoping that it passes really quick, i dont wanna be in that drawn out situation where im gonna hide my bite an just wait to turn at the most opportune time. i rather be dealt with right there and then and make my love ones that are still alive make that decision fast.

[HardcoreHunter]

4 minutes ago, Poof said:

I'm at a dilemma. If it's too fast, it's less horrific since being sick and getting to the end quicker is probably what we all would want instead of it being a long drawn out sickness (unless you needed more time for something critical) and too fast limits the ability of the disease to spread. Like 1-10 minutes would mean you could conceivably limit the disease to one continent bc ppl wouldn't be asymptomatic and getting taken aboard boats or planes. Unless someone purposely brought zombies over. Also harder for it to infiltrate a safe zone. But then once in a safe zone, faster is definitely the worse situation.

Too slow, and it's like ok a zombie got in our city, it bit 3 ppl before we killed it. Now we have plenty of time to quarantine those 3 ppl and we'll be fine.

If the dead are rising I'd assume boarders are getting closed. It'll be full martial law not just a quarantine. 

As well for the infected are we going with fully dead zombies, or just rabid humans? Fully dead zombies we would have to assume the virus has some form of preservative in it that will kill the host then reanimate them. There needs to be a preservative because our brains will turn to literal liquid in a few days without something to stabilize it. As well in the cold it would have to have some anti-freeze property. Even if the zombie were to freeze solid in the winter, something would have to protect the brain from being damaged from ice crystals. It's the reason why humans can't just freeze ourselves, our cells get ruptured from the ice, while things like reptiles and amphibians can avoid this. 

Also side note Cargo was a pretty good film if nobody has seen it. 

[Raptorpat]

29 minutes ago, Poof said:

Does that bother you? It bothers me how arbitrary infections can be in the zombie genre. It's been a long time since i played any REs I can't really comment 

It just seems arbitrary even limiting to just this one franchise, rather than the entire genre. In the re1 in-game lore, there are entries that indicate how the infection took it's course over a period of days, but then in re0 the zombies on the train reanimated in a matter of hours (and minutes, in the case of Edward).

I suppose they may be distinguishing between methods of infection - the re1 outbreak was presumably inhaled by the first victims (they never went into specifics), versus the re0 train passengers being infected by leeches (and Edward by the dogs) transmitting the virus directly into the bloodstream via bites. 

I'm on re2 now (the recent remake and not the original) and it's been a good fifteen years since I played any of the other ones, so I'm rusty on subsequent lore on the science of it all. One of the things I liked about the series as a teen was it's seemingly consistent canon lore, but replaying as an adult it seems a lot less rock solid.

21 minutes ago, Poof said:

Yea too quick is like scary in the sense that your group is more vulnerable to being overrun, but slow and gradual is more horrific to me.

Oooo that reminds me. Should ppl have a chance to fight off an infection or is a bite guaranteed death/zombie?

To the extent we're talking the viral kind, I think it makes more sense to take longer. The immune system tries (and fails) to fight it off so the victim has to go through those stages of feeling sick, all while continuing to persist despite the inevitability of it all.

One of the things I am really appreciating about the re2 remake is that it is really doing a good job of, just through environment design an occasional lore entries, illustrating how the police station turned from a refuge into a hellscape as the sick survivors turned one by one, while rooms and hallways were barricaded off all to no avail because the healthy survivors continued to treat the sick. Like the effort put into that narrative makes it more interesting than the actual narrative of the game.

[HardcoreHunter]

5 minutes ago, Poof said:

I never took that line to heart or that they were divine retribution unless the canon actually specifies that. To me a character mentioning that doesn't really make it so.

I totally forgot the told us the origin in Night of the Living Dead. I forgot all about the space probe radiation...

In Dawn it was a last minute line added for a walk on character that George felt would be a good add in for the scene. It wasn't even in the script it's just something the guy said. In dawn the message of the film was "wei're them and they're us" but "when there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth" was a better tagline. Though in Night and Dawn the zombies would still eat anything living. In Day of the Dead they introduced a Spiritual Jamaican that would talk about things like a soul, and had the zombies refuse to eat anything other than human flesh. While night and dawn showed that the undead retained some level's of problem solving and habit formed memory. Day and land of the dead showed that the person is still fully in there and hadn't died or moved on. 

Though yeah the space probe radiation always gets forgotten as the cause of everything. Romero changed his mind several times on a lot of the things in the dead universe. Kinda weird that he had the final say so on all of that and nobody ever brings up Russo who also wrote night of the living dead and directed Return of the living dead. Though I guess that was part of the court deal where they went separate ways. 

 

[HardcoreHunter]

16 minutes ago, Distortedreasoning said:

and make my love ones that are still alive make that decision fast.

Why not just do it yourself, you're going to make your family old yeller ya, or risk killing them?

[HardcoreHunter]

22 minutes ago, Poof said:

unless the canon actually specifies that

No it's not outright specified, forgot to mention that. Though after Dawn Romero really started pushing the plague as some retribution for mankind's transgression.  When you think about the times, the space probe cause could also be seen as that in some way, as there were people back then that felt that space travel was sacrilegious. Really I think it was more him just changing his mind a lot over the years. He did that with the character Ben in Night many times. "Ben was really just written as a white guy, but Duane just gave the best line read. I didn't think anything of it at the time". To later saying that it was planned that way, to which others working with him had called bullshit. Especially since the script had Ben originally written as a dumb trucker. 

[HardcoreHunter]

18 minutes ago, Raptorpat said:

zombies on the train reanimated in a matter of hours

It's relative to death. If the person is alive their body will fight the infection making it take much longer. When they die the virus can quickly infect the body. Makes no sense though if you go with the retcon that the zombies are all living people and not undead. 

[HardcoreHunter]

 

[Raptorpat]

13 minutes ago, HardcoreHunter said:

It's relative to death. If the person is alive their body will fight the infection making it take much longer. When they die the virus can quickly infect the body. Makes no sense though if you go with the retcon that the zombies are all living people and not undead. 

I didn't play the original 1996 game but I don't recall it ever not being that the "death" was just the body going catatonic during the virally enduced metamorphosis. But I could be totally wrong because I'm rusty on literally everything but re0 and the re1 remake.

[Poof]

1 hour ago, lupin_bebop said:

10 minutes is too quick. The world would be overrun in literally less than a day.

Fast and slow infections both have different advantages and disadvantages for the zombies. Which is best really depends on how the humans respond to the zombie pandemic.

[Poof]

1 hour ago, new_disease said:

Mhmm too quick isn't as scary to me. I think I'd go as far as 2 weeks but anything more than I'd think that gives one enough time to fully go through the stages of grief and accept their fate so that wouldn't be as scary in the end for the one that was bitten.

I'd say they could have a chance, depending on where they get bit they could fight it off through amputation or maybe even just excising the part of the flesh that was bitten. But for the excisions that would be assuming that you get clear visual cues of how far the infection is currently, like if the flesh starts turning a different color or starts oozing or something. 

A infection longer than 2 weeks could give people time to develop denial and convince themselves they'll be ok... until the symptoms start to appear...

I did mean without amputation or excision. Like if you get bit and get sick, could your body's immune system have a shot at beating the contagion on its own or not?

I always thought amputations should work most of the time as long as it's done fast enough. And it's always extra horrifying the times when they amputate but they weren't fast enough so they turn anyway. Lots of potential there.

[Poof]

1 hour ago, Distortedreasoning said:

yeah im pretty much hoping that it passes really quick, i dont wanna be in that drawn out situation where im gonna hide my bite an just wait to turn at the most opportune time. i rather be dealt with right there and then and make my love ones that are still alive make that decision fast.

plus it could be a painful sickness and you could be a burden on the other survivors.

There's just so many variables when it comes to zombies. It's hard to choose what's best.

[HardcoreHunter]

28 minutes ago, Raptorpat said:

I didn't play the original 1996 game but I don't recall it ever not being that the "death" was just the body going catatonic during the virally enduced metamorphosis. But I could be totally wrong because I'm rusty on literally everything but re0 and the re1 remake.

Wesker's reports talk about vital functions stopping before reanimation I believe. Though I think that's all code veronica, wesker reports, or umbrella Chronicles info. Though RE 3 Remake having the graveyard scene removed with zombies coming out of coffins and graves was removed apparently as part of the retcon of the Zombies not being dead while it was in the original. 

[HardcoreHunter]

10 minutes ago, Poof said:

A infection longer than 2 weeks could give people time to develop denial and convince themselves they'll be ok... until the symptoms start to appear...

I did mean without amputation or excision. Like if you get bit and get sick, could your body's immune system have a shot at beating the contagion on its own or not?

I always thought amputations should work most of the time as long as it's done fast enough. And it's always extra horrifying the times when they amputate but they weren't fast enough so they turn anyway. Lots of potential there.

Unless it were a very small wound it would be difficult to hide for a long period of time. As well zombie wounds tend to either cause necrosis of tissue, or prevent the wound from healing; usually being platelet destruction, anemia, and infection.  As for amputation it more than likely wouldn't work. Your blood circulates through your body too quickly. I looked up how long an injection takes to reach the brain from the arm, and it says under 4 seconds. So even if it were possible to cut the arm of in 2 seconds a lot of the infection would already be spread through your body on its way to the brain. 

[new_disease]

13 minutes ago, Poof said:

A infection longer than 2 weeks could give people time to develop denial and convince themselves they'll be ok... until the symptoms start to appear...

I did mean without amputation or excision. Like if you get bit and get sick, could your body's immune system have a shot at beating the contagion on its own or not?

I always thought amputations should work most of the time as long as it's done fast enough. And it's always extra horrifying the times when they amputate but they weren't fast enough so they turn anyway. Lots of potential there.

Ooh good point

I think that could be possible. And that thought makes my mind go dark. Like depending on how bleak it is in the world, if some people's immune systems beat it and they're ok; I'd imagine anyone with the resources and means to develop any kind of treatment could be driven to the point of keeping people like that by force if need be in order to do what needs to be done. 

And yeah that's true. I never kept up with it recently but I think in The Walking Dead there was someone like that, who amputated but in the end he still ended up turning. I could be mistaken though, it's been a while. 

[HardcoreHunter]

Resident Evil factoid about the T Virus is that it was actually a failure because it wasn't deadly enough and had a minimal spread radius. This is why they began experimenting with it on leeches and reptiles. It's weird that umbrella tests things on humans first and then moves onto animals, but I'm no scientist.  As well 10% of the population were immune to the T Virus which was considered not good enough.  

[lupin_bebop]

26 minutes ago, Poof said:

Fast and slow infections both have different advantages and disadvantages for the zombies. Which is best really depends on how the humans respond to the zombie pandemic.

Fast is just us being screwed. Slow is closer to real.

[resurrected]

RE2 Remake, the black guy who is a cop in the police station, he has already been bitten when you enter the station. He doesn't turn until like halfway through the game or more. 

Omar Epps's character in the third RE movie takes a while to turn too. 

So, I'm going to say 3-5 hours.

To turn into a crimson head, I'm gonna say an hour or two after becoming a zombie. In the RE1 realm of things. 

And maybe an extra hour to turn into the bad ass crimson head that's locked in a coffin in RE1. He couldn't have been turned for terribly long, like months or anything. Because the outbreak was relatively new, and someone had already locked him away.

Edited August 26, 2020 by resurrected

[resurrected]

Also, some of the notes you find along the way in the RE games, where you can see the transformation, based on the writing, kind of contradicts what I just said, but it's also contradictory to the actual game play. Some of those notes are over the span of several days, but you're only playing the game over the course of one night. So, by that theory, it varies tremendously. 

[RainyDayJizz#35]

3 hours ago, Poof said:

 I was actually thinking about what's scariest when I made the poll. 

Ooh, then I actually like my vote. Cause you have a week, but you could turn at any time after a day. Nerve wracking.

[Raptorpat]

6 hours ago, HardcoreHunter said:

Resident Evil factoid about the T Virus is that it was actually a failure because it wasn't deadly enough and had a minimal spread radius. This is why they began experimenting with it on leeches and reptiles. It's weird that umbrella tests things on humans first and then moves onto animals, but I'm no scientist.  As well 10% of the population were immune to the T Virus which was considered not good enough.  

Per re0, Dr. Marcus started testing on the children in the training facility because he wasn't getting the data/results he wanted from other animals.

[Codename: Jackass]

You get a day or two before zamby so you can hide your bite from the group and when people ask you what's wrong because you're all pale and sweaty you're like "haha just freaked out man heh" and then you pull up your pants leg when nobody's looking and there's a big chunk of flesh missing out of your ankle with like grey skin and purple veins radiating out.

And then you fall into a coma in the middle of some intense shit and nobody can do anything about it until you've already zombo.com

tear their faces off

rip eat good taste

Edited August 26, 2020 by empty

[Codename: Jackass]

http://www.zombo.com/

[Poof]

10 hours ago, HardcoreHunter said:

If the dead are rising I'd assume boarders are getting closed. It'll be full martial law not just a quarantine. 

As well for the infected are we going with fully dead zombies, or just rabid humans? Fully dead zombies we would have to assume the virus has some form of preservative in it that will kill the host then reanimate them. There needs to be a preservative because our brains will turn to literal liquid in a few days without something to stabilize it. As well in the cold it would have to have some anti-freeze property. Even if the zombie were to freeze solid in the winter, something would have to protect the brain from being damaged from ice crystals. It's the reason why humans can't just freeze ourselves, our cells get ruptured from the ice, while things like reptiles and amphibians can avoid this. 

Also side note Cargo was a pretty good film if nobody has seen it. 

I saw Cargo. I liked it a lot. Martin Freeman is a good actor.

I tend to imagine infected rabid humans rather than actual undead. Still, for fully undead zombies, I don't think we should be applying the normal rules of decay. Since they get up and run around, the corpse's system has obviously changed. There definitely would have to be a mechanism that's keeping the brain from decomposing.

The anti-freeze thing is another variable. Some zombie fictions are based around getting someplace cold so youll be safer from the zombies. I think they'd need an anti-freeze property or some way of surviving the cold like blubbering up like a bear and hibernating in a cave or super metabolisms while they huddle up like penguins. It's just too easy for there to be complete salvation in the cold.

[Poof]

10 hours ago, Raptorpat said:

It just seems arbitrary even limiting to just this one franchise, rather than the entire genre. In the re1 in-game lore, there are entries that indicate how the infection took it's course over a period of days, but then in re0 the zombies on the train reanimated in a matter of hours (and minutes, in the case of Edward).

I suppose they may be distinguishing between methods of infection - the re1 outbreak was presumably inhaled by the first victims (they never went into specifics), versus the re0 train passengers being infected by leeches (and Edward by the dogs) transmitting the virus directly into the bloodstream via bites. 

I'm on re2 now (the recent remake and not the original) and it's been a good fifteen years since I played any of the other ones, so I'm rusty on subsequent lore on the science of it all. One of the things I liked about the series as a teen was it's seemingly consistent canon lore, but replaying as an adult it seems a lot less rock solid.

To the extent we're talking the viral kind, I think it makes more sense to take longer. The immune system tries (and fails) to fight it off so the victim has to go through those stages of feeling sick, all while continuing to persist despite the inevitability of it all.

One of the things I am really appreciating about the re2 remake is that it is really doing a good job of, just through environment design an occasional lore entries, illustrating how the police station turned from a refuge into a hellscape as the sick survivors turned one by one, while rooms and hallways were barricaded off all to no avail because the healthy survivors continued to treat the sick. Like the effort put into that narrative makes it more interesting than the actual narrative of the game.

zombie games are such a good opportunity for environmental storytelling. state of decay does it really well sometimes. The closer you look the more things you find. Things like putting wedding rings on skeletons then if you look around you might find out what happened to the spouse. 

I like the getting sick option. I was particularly intrigued when I found out rabies will progress faster or slower depending on how far from the central nervous system the bite is. I like that... traveling up the nerves. Then once it enters the CNS, you get sick, and it's up to your immune system. Two different variables to give uncertainty to the situation and cover a wide range of progressions. I'm still not sure what time frames are best tho. I like the responses this thread got. I didn't expect so many tbh. It's given me lots to think about.