Rage virus
From Zombiepedia
The Rage Virus is a fictional virus appearing in the 2002 film 28 Days Later, and in the 2007 film 28 Weeks Later. It also appears in the graphic novel 28 Days Later: The Aftermath.
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[edit] Origin
In the graphic novel 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, two Cambridge University scientists named Clive and Warren were trying to isolate the specific neurochemicals that cause anger and excessive aggression] in humans in order to develop an inhibitor that regulates anger control issues.
Warren decided that it was waste of time to experiment on volunteers from the school for the experiment because Cambridge students obviously didn't have uncontrollable rage. So he manages to get a contact at a police station to give him a violent criminal as a test subject. There was a problem with the delivery system. The injections were too diluted so Warren increased the dosage. However, the inhibitor still had no effect and when the test subject was about to attack Warren and Clive, Warren was forced to kill him. He then immediately decided they would experiment on chimpanzees, as Clive had been suggesting.
As Warren and Clive were burying the criminal, Clive sneezed - giving Warren an idea. They had known that delivering widespread with a pill wouldn't do, neither would an aerosol. He decided that they should use a contagion as a delivery system. He located a certain genome in a strain of the Ebola virus. Using this new delivery system, the two exposed a chimpanzee to the inhibitor. However, the inhibitor mutated. In the chimpanzee, it had the opposite effect of what is was supposed to do. That is, it caused the chimpanzee to be full of uncontrollable rage. Warren had "created a rage virus."
Clive was so disgusted by this that he quit. He later informed an animal rights eco-terrorist organization about the experimenting on animals and then shot himself. A group of those eco-terrorist would later brake into the lab and free the infected rage filled chimpanzee. That chimpanzee attacked and infected them and Warren. From them, the rage virus spread throughout the island of Britain.[1]
[edit] Characteristics
After the virus enters the characters bloodstream, the virus would be usually very quick to manifest itself in the fictional victim's behavior (see below), from the films it is shown that only 10 to 20 seconds is required for the virus symptoms to become noticeable though infection time is possibly determined by the amount of infected blood that has gotten into the bloodstream and the overall mass of the person in question. As the Human changes to Rage Victim he twitches madly in an almost Spasm Manner, this is a sad time for the human in hand as he cannot control the state he will live in or die as after the rage virus takes over his being. The fictional virus can also pass through bodily fluids and has an almost 100% communicability rate, though it may be noted that some characters posses a hereditary immunity, allowing them to become infected with the virus without exhibiting any of its usual symptoms (save the bloodshot eyes). These characters remain carriers of the infection, and can transmit it through saliva and blood transmission.
Danny Boyle has stated that in the films, primates are the only animals that can carry the virus (a fact that is further touched upon in the second film in the series)[2].
[edit] Symptoms of Infected Characters
The Rage virus does not directly cause the death of its host, but because the host is solely focused on infecting or killing the non-Infected, it causes those infected to become disinterested in self-nourishment which will eventually cause death by starvation. Since the virus causes those infected to act with no regard for self-preservation, they will not act to evade mortal danger, such as fire or chemical gas.
The Infected experience spasms in the extremities, and their irises become blood red. They also vomit copious amounts of infected blood.
It has also been shown that the Infected use their sense of smell to find the uninfected and that trace amounts of products such as perfume or soap will attract them to the source.[3]
[edit] Carriers
28 Weeks Later explores the discovery that there are certain people who will not display any symptoms of the virus except for partially red sclera. These people are classified as "asymptomatic carriers." The person will not become uncontrollably violent like other Infected, and they retain their normal personality. The person is not immune to the virus, however, just the symptoms, and the person can spread the virus as easily as any other Infected (such as saliva contact).
[edit] The Infected
The Infected are distinct from cinematic zombies; they are not the revived dead. Also, films such as the Living Dead, Return of the Living Dead, and Resident Evil series portray zombies as creatures that desire to consume living flesh. By contrast, while the Infected will attempt to bite their victims, it is usually as a means either of killing them (often by severing the main arteries in their neck) or spreading the virus. They are not shown to ingest any organic material, apparently due to their disregard for nourishment. Another key difference is that the Rage-infected victims are still living human beings and as such can be killed using conventional weapons that inflict fatal injuries.
The Infected still have the same level of mobility as they did before becoming infected. Both films have also demonstrated that they do possess a rudimentary sense of spatial awareness. In 28 Weeks Later, the character Don is also shown to be able to manipulate such simplistic objects as blunt-force weapons.
Additionally, the adrenal gland of an infected person continually pumps adrenaline in to their system, allowing them to display extraordinary feats of strength, agility, and endurance and also to ignore wounds such as explosive amputation of limbs and immolation.[4].
[edit] References
- ↑ 28 Days Later: The Aftermath#Stage 1: Development
- ↑ 28 Weeks Later
- ↑ 28 Days Later: The Aftermath#Stage 3: Decimation
- ↑ Director's commentary on the 28 Days Later DVD
| This page uses content from the Annex. The original article was at Wikipedia at Rage (fictional virus). The list of authors can be seen in the Annex page history. As with Zombiepedia, the text of the Annex is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
