Now, back to Dale and his zombie virus.
Last week I talked about my upcoming story, The Smell of the Dead, and how I got the ideas for the virus used. Today I want to go into more detail about the viruses.
First off, on the subject of Morgellons Disease, this has to be one of the weirdest diseases I have ever heard off. After some research I couldn't help but see a connection between Morgellons and a zombie virus. Here are a list of the symptoms:
Skin rashes or sores that can cause intense itching
Crawling sensations on and under the skin, often compared to insects moving, stinging or biting, or worms crawling under the skin.
Fibers or crystals, threads or black stringy material in and on the skin
Behavioral changes
Black specks in lesions that do not heal
Memory loss or general brain fog with difficulty concentrating
Imagine one moment you are alive but sick. The next you are coughing up blood with strange looking fibers scattered about in the mess. Then the fibers start to protrude from your skin. And to make matters worse, they spread a virus that turns people into zombies.
MRSA
MRSA can look like a spider bite, pimple, or boil. They can quickly turn into painful abscesses that need surgical draining. The bacteria can stay confined in the skin, but can also burrow deep into the body, causing infections in the bones, bloodstream, surgical scars, heart valves, lungs, and joints.
Why or how could a zombie virus effect the body like it does? Or should I ask, why or how my virus would? This virus would effect the body on such a deep level, though it would begin with the brain, it spreads out through the entire body. The zombie virus is this story, once in the final stage, is incurable.
Lyme
What drew me to Lyme being a part of the virus, is the fact that the bacteria can hide among the DNA without being noticed. And since so many doctors don't believe it is disease, wold make spotting this kind virus very hard.
The zombie virus is made up of several different types of viruses. Lyme makes it invisible to detect, and so many doctors wouldn't even believe it exist.
Next week I will bring all of these together and show a brief scene of one the characters from The Smell of the Dead slowly turning into a zombie.
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Author Dale Eldon lives in a Macomb, Illinois, and takes care of a sick mother while working overnights at McDonald's. He spends his free time with loved ones and writing his butt off. Between blogging and writing anthology submission calls, he is currently working on a zombie trilogy for a series of novellas and a novel.
Great post! Don't forget the septicemic version of the Plague. From Wikepedia:
ReplyDeleteIn septicemic plague, bacterial endotoxins cause disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), causing tiny clots throughout the body and possibly ischaemic necrosis (tissue death due to lack of circulation/perfusion to that tissue) from the clots. DIC results in depletion of the body's clotting resources, so that it can no longer control bleeding. Consequently, there is bleeding into the skin and other organs, which can cause red and/or black patchy rash and hemoptysis/haemoptysis (coughing up or vomiting of blood). There are bumps on the skin that look somewhat like insect bites; these are usually red, and sometimes white in the center.
EESH! Zombies!
What an interesting post! Thank you for sharing this with us ~ this blog is fantastic and very useful.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I've never written about zombies, don't even know where I'd start, it is something that gets my attention and imagination swirling. Yep. Going to have to follow this blog...
Bella-- you actually bring up an interesting point. This sepsis picture you describe can actually happen with any pathogen-- probably more likely with urosepsis or blood borne sepsis. So, it's definitely not just restricted to the plague.
ReplyDeleteAmanda-- yes, definitely follow. This is how I draw for my random "love my followers" book giveaways and there will be lots in December for sure.
Can both of you handle these zombie books if you win?
Yikes! Scary! :)
ReplyDeleteDon't forget rabies! You get bitten, you go mad, lose co-ordination and mental capacities, perhaps become violent and start biting people yourself and infect them.
ReplyDeleteI can also imagine rabies having something to do with werewolf and vampire myths - wolves, I'm told, have a particularly aggressive reaction to the disease, and in parts of South America, there lives a night-flying creature that can drink your blood without even waking you. When you do wake, it is long gone and you are covered in blood. Some of its victims will go mad and possibly bite others and infect them.
That's a good point about rabies Carrie and probably a post I should do. The scary thing is that there is a short window to provide treatment for rabies infection-- past a certain point, there is nothing medicine can do to save you and you will die.
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