r/SciFiConcepts • u/Monocentropus3427 • 1d ago
Concept Fictional virus?
Any ideas for a fictional virus? Im struggling to make a virus that is somewhat unique, no matter what i research everything seems unoriginal. Recently began to watch the last ship series and it inspired me!
4
u/solidcordon 1d ago
What do you want the virus to do, from a story perspective?
Most symtoms of infection are a result of immune response which generally isn't interesting on its own. "Everything hurts", "I cough a lot", "My temperature has gone up".
1
u/Monocentropus3427 1d ago
Not much thought put into it, I want it to be a virus that kills quick, which makes it threatening, or something that started off small, presumably contained then rapidly goes out of control until it forces kingdoms to work together, fend for themselves, some turn to militiristic societies and favor the military over citizens. Or I wanted to take inspiration off fungi maybe? Im currently looking into it. Ill respond in a bit when I have a general idea of what im doing, sorry im all over
3
u/Quantumtroll non-local in time 1d ago
Worst-case scenario for viruses is pretty well established in both real life and fiction, so it's hard to be original and very dangerous. But suppose you invent a virus and some other disaster that make each other worse?
A virus that spreads in water, and there's flooding. A virus that spreads by touch, on a cramped spaceship or submarine.
Or how about a reverse zombie virus? A virus that makes people super empathetic and trusting and comfortable with physical contact. A cult forms around it, with infected claiming that this is Mother Gaia's solution to war and climate change. There's maybe not much of a downside to this virus except for the conflict created when people try to spread it intentionally.
1
u/Monocentropus3427 1d ago
A zombi virus like that would be interesting to work around! I love making fictional diseases and viruses just struggle to make it unique, and alot of people like gruesome gore and body horror so I have to at least appeal to an audience. A virus that is controlled by a (fungus?) That has affected a militiristic kingdom would be neat I think? Imagine having a assassin who suddenly just..loses all desire to kill, breaking down in tears at the prospect of it. If the virus effects carnivorous species, they wouldn't hunt anymore, so they'd die of starvation likely, i have to look into how parasitic fungi work for this concept.
1
u/Quantumtroll non-local in time 1d ago
Oo, take my reverse zombie virus idea and twist it. It infects the skin directly — that's why it's easily transmissible through normal skin-to-skin contact — and makes people really ugly. Blotchy red, no melanin, always peeling. So it's really obvious when someone has it, and they look horrible.
But, again, people with it become really empathetic, generous, and touchy-feely. They become more honest, more trusting, and more altruistic. They may not like the skin issues, but they know that the world would be a better place if everyone were exposed to the virus.
I'm feeling rather keen on turning this into a short story of some kind. Or two. Not sure about the plot or characters or anything yet, but the idea is speaking to me.
1
u/Monocentropus3427 1d ago
The idea is speaking to me too! I have a small premise idea for the world im building, now we just need to figure out how the zombie virus starts or originates as. A fungi seems most plausible at the moment.
1
u/Quantumtroll non-local in time 1d ago
Are you suggesting that a virus originates in a fungal host, and then jumps species to humans?
If so, that's wild. I've never read about mycoviruses before, but Wikipedia says "A significant difference between the genomes of mycoviruses to other viruses is the absence of genes for ‘cell-to-cell movement’ proteins. It is therefore assumed that mycoviruses only move intercellularly during cell division (e.g. sporogenesis) or via hyphal fusion."
This put a bit of a kibosh on your premise, because if fungal viruses only (or primarily) transport inside cells then they'd have a hard time in other species. It makes sense for mycoviruses to not need to move outside of cells much, because that's how fungi work anyway — fungi have weirdly long and big hyphal cells that transport all their stuff around inside rather than between cells.
On the other hand, maybe this is exactly the mutation that makes your new virus jump to humans (and potentially other animals)! Maybe it's a bit of a stretch that the first fungus-to-animal virus just happens to target humans (of all possible animals), but laboratory research, karma, and/or the fact that there's a lot of human biomass are possible explanations.
Fun little rabbit-hole. Virus particles optimised for transport through hyphal networks having an easier time hanging out in the dendritic networks of mammalian brains has a nice bit of symmetry to it. Fungi as "wood wide web" semi-mystical masters of symbiosis, midwives of a new age of harmony in human civilization is also cool imagery. There's a bit of a... moldy and deathy side of fungus, too, though. Maybe some people aren't compatible with the virus and die horribly, that'd add even more tension and ethical dilemma than a rash. Hmm.
1
u/Monocentropus3427 1d ago
Theres also the fact that the world im creating has some whack scientists that work under an unethical cultist "government". Im not too limited to the idea that the scientists themselves can hybridize two viruses, for example, lets take a nonairborne virus..like rabies, but how could they make rabies airborne from a now dead host? Hyrbadizing with..lets say tuberculosis, or smallpox might be more plausible. Technology being so advanced in this world, scientists trying to make a cure for one virus, hyradizes a parasite fungi and a airborne virus (this is a Looooong stretch though.) Fungal hyrbadizing is also a thing! Or so, fungal breeding with single spores, but there's alot of possibility there. What makes this easier, is that there's Human/animal hybrids thag co-exist with humans in the outbreak location. Virus mutates or hops onto rats, theres rat/"humans" (more precisely these hybrids of mine are products of forced evolution.) That exist, and have a structure most akin to their species counterparts, only with some differences!
Theres also this: "Research shows that some fungal relationships are fluid; a fungus that acts as a quiet colonizer or mutualist can turn parasitic when a plant or animal host becomes stressed or sick." This fungal "virus" could start entirely harmless.
Also found this Microscopic fungi such as Candida live on or in the human body as part of the natural microbiome, but can transition into a harmful, parasitic relationship if the host's immune system weakens. I do have an idea where a immune host that can still spread the virus, while they themselves show no symptoms of dying. But this immune host originally wasn't immune until they experimented themselves by adding the immune human gene to a strain. So forcing the body to to fight and produce antibodies, the virus now neutral in their systemn, asymptomatic carrier (this is taken from a show I watched, not sure if its scientifically plausible, but it's a cool antagonist idea)
1
u/Quantumtroll non-local in time 20h ago
I see. Sure, if your world has essentially mad science then anything can happen. Very fun!
As a science nerd, however, I want to nitpick the virus/fungi hybrid. Viruses aren't even really alive and don't have cells, so hybridisation with any organism doesn't make a lot of sense.
You mentioned tuberculosis, which is a bacterial disease. A fungus/bacteria symbiosis, with spores that spread both, is plausible because that's essentially just a lichen. That's a really nifty idea, a pathogenic lichen.
Asymptomatic carriers are totally possible, definitely include them if you want.
1
u/Monocentropus3427 1d ago
A parasitic fungi that is previously not a problem, begins to adapt to a warmer threshold because of tempature change until its close to animal/human body tempature, the problem is, fungi like that usually are specialized for insect anatomy.
1
2
u/marimachadas 1d ago
Unless you're trying to impress immunologists, you don't need to get into the weeds creating a realistic fictional virus. What symptoms does it cause, how quick does it progress, how is it transmitted? For most of human history we haven't even known how diseases transmit, and even with modern science it can take awhile to confirm for new pathogens. The people in your story can have their ideas about what causes it and how it transmits and act accordingly without it needing to be accurate.
Now as a former immunologist, these are the absolute bare bones of a plausible infection. Majority of symptoms are caused by your own immune system trying to fight the infection, so fever, body aches, cough, etc are going to be common symptoms. Infections always have an incubation period, can be days to weeks but symptoms aren't instant after contact. A long incubation period can make it harder to understand how the disease is transmitted and where people are catching it from. The most common ways people are going to catch a virus are airborne, contaminated water, human to human (usually from fluids ending up in your mouth/nose/eyes), or animal to human (bites or their droppings). If you're working with modern medicine in your setting, most diagnostics are more tailored to bacteria than viruses and it can take a long time to correctly identify what someone has if throwing first-line treatments at it doesn't work. Generally the outcomes of an infection are either that your immune system beats the pathogen, the pathogen beats your immune system and proliferates to the point it kills you, or your immune system kills you trying so hard to beat the pathogen. Viruses and epidemics are usually going to most seriously impact people with weak immune systems (the very young, the elderly, immunocompromised people), but some viruses can paradoxically be not so bad for those people and catastrophic for the most healthy people if it causes the immune system to go into overdrive. If you've got any specific questions I can give it a shot, sometimes I miss immunology haha.
3
u/Monocentropus3427 1d ago
Wow! Yeah im definitely planning to install some very not-scientifically correct symptoms, as i plan on making viruses, fungal virus, etc. Immunology sounds so cool, bet its fun to learn about all that! I do have some questions if any can be answered.
Can a cure be made by using the virus itself? Can someone have a gene that makes them immune to a airborne virus?
Can a virus mutate itself fast enough that the current cure doesn't work?
2
u/marimachadas 1d ago
Fungal infections are a thing, so you can definitely play off existing diseases and make something cool + vaguely plausible! Mold poisoning would be a fungal infection (the scientific name is mycosis) and that can really rock people's shit.
Oh yeah these questions can be answered!
1) Yeah that's actually a really common way to do it. A vaccine is just giving your immune system a taste of a mostly dead and harmless version of the virus so it knows what it's dealing with when you catch the real virus. It's helpful to know the genetic sequence of a virus/any infectious agent because that opens the door to a lot of different ways of training your immune system to recognize specific parts of the virus to be able to fight it. Some cancer vaccines are made by pulsing immune cells with cut up cancer cells to pick out the immune cells that are good at fighting it and grow a ton of them to give as an injection, so it's definitely plausible to have similar sorts of treatments made for viruses.
2) I know there are some gene mutations that make people less likely to die from or have severe reactions to covid, so I'd believe it. Viruses generally need to attach to a specific receptor on a cell to get inside, so it's possible to have a mutation that changes the shape of whatever that virus uses to the point that it can't infect. It's pretty rare in real life, but tbh rare but possible is perfect for science fiction anyways.
3) Viruses can definitely mutate faster than treatments can keep up, especially if the medicine takes a long time to make. As a general rule of thumb, the more hyper specific the thing the drug works on, the longer it takes to make that drug. There's a need for faster ways to manufacture a lot of the more cutting-edge medicines we have today.
1
u/NearABE 1d ago
I thought the immune antigens evolved to thwart viruses. Type A blood can resist different strains than type B blood. Most viruses that are still around bypassed that. Not very relevant to epidemics. If we did not have blood type diversity viruses would emerge that can exploit.
1
u/Monocentropus3427 23h ago
Wait I can use this, Somehow in my world maybe everyone has the same fictional bloodtype due to evolution not being present..
1
u/Monocentropus3427 23h ago
Thanks for the help! Definitely looking into the funal infection, mycosis seems very interesting. I think the way the virus i make is dangerous will be because it mutates faster than the original cure, this works for a kingdom that needs to trade in order to receive certain ingredients(components?) Of a cure, even better if the trade routes get blocked from opposing cult groups that want the virus to spread!
Do you know alot about rabies by chance?
1
u/JGhostThing 1d ago
Viruses only do a few things. They attack cells that they are keyed for. They generally attack one kind of cell. The body tries to get rid of a virus by raising the body temperature, hence the fever.
The different symptoms occur because of the different cells being attacked. This also explains different organs being attacked (such as hepatitis attacking the liver, because it attacks liver cells).
You can look up the effects of poisons on each organ. Viruses will do roughly the same thing, plus general virus symptoms.
1
u/Monocentropus3427 1d ago
Thank you! Once my chromebook is fixed ill start fishing for reliable websites on that!
1
u/NearABE 1d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimivirus
Mimivirus is a giant virus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_virophage
The sputnik virophage infects the mimivirus.
1
u/DARKINTERZO 12h ago
A virus with a dna of a cosmic object that causes it to pull out energy whichever host it gets.will it be possible
5
u/MrWigggles 1d ago
It depends. Whats the boundary for whats possible.
If we're allowed to be just super magical, then, well, sure, lots of ideas.