On 11/2/22 11:43, Jeffrey Schwartz - schwartz.jeffrey at gmail.com (via
tml list) wrote:
> IMTU -
> All TL10 or above medical systems on ships include nanovirals. In some
> cases there's biotech that replenishes it, or it's considered part of
> the life support replenishment on reaching a new port.
> Colds, flus,etc are ruthlessly crushed while in jump space.... and the
> run to 100D+Jump+in from 100D makes a nice quarantine period
>

Jeff,

What do you mean by "nanovirals"?

Thanks for mentioning the quarantine intrinsic to at least Jump travel.

What happens when a microbe (engineered, natural, or misc) that has a
longer latent period (with an even longer incubation period - time from
exposure to showing symptoms) than a typical jump cycle, given the
selective pressure you've described towards that?  As you've said,
anything showing symptoms more quickly gets either clobbered or the lid
slammed on it, and thus does not significantly reproduce.

Frinstance, if it takes (say) 14 days for such a cycle (including
boosting in/out, jump itself, finding cargo, etc), what happens when a
bug with (say) a 15-20 day (or even 30?) latent period gets off a planet?

A potential nightmare scenario would be a hi-tech, hi-pop world (such as
Terra, in the Golden Age) with wide panimmunity coverage (eg the +8 to
HT rolls I mentioned in my last email - approx 96% resistance to the
"average" bug population-wide), and a "grett, beeg, shneeky-pents" (to
borrow from Girl Genius) bug makes it offworld to a TTL <10 hi-pop world
with significantly weaker coverage.

On a hi-pop world _where such a bug arises_, true, such a bug would
probably be outcompeted by quicker-progressing bugs.

How about other hi-pop worlds?

Such as a bug arising on Terra getting away clean to Meshan, 3 pc away
and thence to Zaggisi, another 3 pc away, before J. Random Poorsod
(Patient Zero) starts showing symptoms?

How about non-hi-pop worlds?

Alex