Infections

As there are more than just virus of bacteria that can infect you on station, you need to know what else can get inside and kill you, in space.



Virology 101
The first, and most important way to prevent 99% of infections, it's proper hazard wear, and knowing how to keep the infection from spreading.

The Clothes
The following will protect you, from the dangerous infections of space, each giving more and more (till total) protection against infection:
 * Level-3 Bio Hood
 * Level-3 Bio Suit
 * Jumpsuit (virologist, CMO, geneticist, chemist, doctor, nurse suit, scrubs, Research Director)
 * Latex Gloves
 * Sterile mask
 * Shoes (White shoes and Galoshes are the best)
 * Private (clean) Internals

Isolation
If you, or another crew member are infected, do not spread the infection further. Seek the isolation bay of the medical wing, or head to a room no one will enter but yourself and other infected.

Cleanliness
Cleaning blood spills from the ground will prevent contact contamination, make sure blood is cleaned from the floor at all time. Any blood splatter out there could hold a dreaded space infection. Contact a janitor if you see blood on the floor, do not interact with the blood if you suspect possible infection chance. Any object or floor that has infected blood on it can infect anyone who handles or touches it.

Methods of Infection
The following are the various ways a disease can spread, keep this in mind at all times:
 * Airborne - The most dangerous and quick spreading, if you are anywhere within the breathing area of the infected crew member, you have a chance to be infected.
 * Direct Contact - Requires you to touch, been touched, or be extremely close to the source of the infection. The infection will be spread by the skin and bodily fluids of an infected person, but will not survive long in the air.
 * Special - The disease is not normally contagious and the affected crewman has been infected by a non-human vector source. You can work with the infected without risk yourself unless they expose you to the same vector source that infected them.

Infection Listings
Thankfully, humanity has managed to cure and eliminate almost all of the diseases that plagued its infancy. However, the vast reaches of space have been found to harbor new illnesses that can affect the unprepared staff on Nanotrasen research stations.

Advanced Diseases
You are able to create your own advance disease with different symptoms, which will have buffs, debuffs and bonuses! You will start out with two advance diseases, the cold and the flu. The cold will have the sneeze symptom and the flu will have the cough symptoms. This will likely change in the future but for now you have two diseases you can mix together. Mixing together the two diseases will create a single disease with the sneezing AND cold symptom. Now when someone is injected with it, they'll sneeze AND cough! There's some symptoms, like headaches, which seem useless but will buff your overall disease so it becomes more resistant to cures.

How To Get More Symptoms
There's two ways to get more symptoms and both of those ways needs you to have an already existing disease.

Virus Food
You can make virus food with Water, Milk and Oxygen. Mixing this with a disease will give that disease a low level symptom.

Unstable Mutagen
You can use mutagen to mutate your disease and give it a high level symptom.

Synaptizine
When this reagent comes in contact with an advance disease, it will remove a symptom from it. This is useful for isolating a useful symptom you want to acquire.

Being Organized
A true virologist will organize their symptoms in a single beaker box on a shelf, like a spice rack. This will make it extra easy to store and mix symptoms together to get a fearful disease. Use your Pandemic Machine to identify a blood sample's symptoms. You can go one step further and get a hand-labeller and label your symptoms for easier management.

It Isn't Easy
There's a downside to having too many symptoms, such as less resistance, less likely to spread, etc... Not only that, but if you add a symptom when you already have three, there's a chance it will overwrite a symptom. This is why it's important to organize your symptoms so that you can try and try again until you get the disease you want.

Symptoms
Remember. You can obtain symptom levels 1 and 2 with Virus Food, which you start with a dispensor full of. For symptom levels 3 and 4 you will need to acquire Unstable Mutagen.