New Idea for Dead Country.

[anthorn]

So I was thinking...

Original premise was scientist tries to cure cancer, terrorists alter the vaccine so it instead causes Zombies. Outbreak spreads from lab across the North East before skipping 15 years into a post Apocalyptic society.

New idea. I thought about it, just now, and I thought about combining it with a different idea.

It's a school reunion held at a little resort in the countryside. A dorky kid who got bullied as a kid, so much so he became homeschooled is now a scientist and a real good one. He happens to work at the lab where they're making the cure for cancer. HE is the one making the changes. He wants to get revenge on his bullies, but then, obviously, the infection gets out of hand and soon spreads across the country.

This leaves the heroes to hunt him down because he has the cure.

Does this sound cliche?

[monsterchic]

Yeah, sounds a bit chiche, but it sounds like a book/storyline that I would like to read. Maybe you could add the twist that they're brothers?

[Arthur_Connelly]

If the story and characterization are good then it doesn't matter if it sounds cliched or not. Originality doesn't guarantee a good story. I'd read it. If you want original elements then add them, but don't worry about the premise sounding like something people have seen before. If all the reader wants is a completely original concept, then his reading choices are going to be very limited.

[Venusian Broon]

Firstly Arthur C is the one to listen too, as how you write it and what you produce are the most important. If we all took that plot line and spun our own stories, we'd probably be astonished by the variety of styles, plots and differences that we'd produce.



But having said that from my knowledge of published works, Frank Herbert wrote White Plague about a guy (who happens to be a molecular biologist) whose wife and children get killed in an IRA bomb, so he makes a plague that kills females only and releases it in Ireland and UK because he blames these two nations for the deaths (but which then spreads to the whole world). I can't from memory remember if they actively try and hunt him down - I think possibly they do.

It is of course not quite the same, but it has very similar beats and elements - at least it does appear so to me when I read your 'pitch'.

[Kamosis]

Well, the problem for me would be how he would do it withouth anyone else in the team noticing, I mean, how he would hide the zombified rats, monkeys and horses they would use to test the new vaccine?

[psychotick]

Hi,

Oddly enough I just watched a doco the other night that answered your question - and I have to say it scared the carp out of me.

He can work from home. A home lab. So why am I in a tizzy you ask? Because I watched a whole bunch of would be genetic tinkerers aged in their twenties at most, playing with sequencers that they got second hand for a grand or so. Those things used to cost hundreds of thousands and even millions. And the power they can place in the hands of people with 'an idea' and no oversight from a scientific ethics committee is frightening.

You want to know where the next plague could come from. Think the modern Frankenstein in his garage with some bacteria, a gene sequencer, and a few vials of growth media.

Unbelievable.

Cheers, Greg.

[James Coote]

How easy is it to find someone when the zombie apocalypse is going on around you? Post apocalypse, without all that technology, without credit cards and phone gps, and without structured society to help you, how do you expect to find anyone? They could be in the next state and they might as well be on another planet for the difference it makes.

What are the heroes going to do in the unlikely scenario they actually find him? Kill him, and lose the person best qualified to reverse the zombie disease? Persuade him? What if he says no? He's had 15 years to manufacture and distribute the cure. If he hasn't already, why not? and what are the heroes going to bring to the table to change that?

Going back to the start, how smart do you have to be to be working on a cure for cancer and yet not see releasing an infectious disease isn't a good idea?

How lax is bio-security at this lab?

This guy's coworkers, they can't be smart enough to be working on a cure for cancer if they can't spot the same things as this guy (the same potential to turn the current cure into a zombie disease). They can't spot, when the disease starts spreading, that it might be related to their work? As Kamosis says, how is he going to hide this work from his coworkers? They're going to notice after a while if he's doing all the work himself, that normally might be passed to a lab tech or assistant. That he's hiding all the data that he produces? Those other scientists are going to want a piece of the glory if he's discovered something or is onto something and not telling anyone else. Management might be suspicious if they think he's using their funding to do other work on the sly

Also, if this scientist is working to cure cancer, and he's pretty close, why would he risk it all to resolve some petty dispute from years ago?

It's like you're in the FA cup final and you've got the ball and an open goal in front of you and it's 0-0 in the last minute of extra time, and instead of slotting the ball home, you wander off into the stands to slap the guy who bullied you in school and tell him how much better you are because he's unemployed and you're a top-class footballer

[Venusian Broon]

Originally Posted by James Coote

What are the heroes going to do in the unlikely scenario they actually find him? Kill him, and lose the person best qualified to reverse the zombie disease? Persuade him? What if he says no? He's had 15 years to manufacture and distribute the cure. If he hasn't already, why not? and what are the heroes going to bring to the table to change that?

In The White Plague, the molecular biologist who cooked up the plague deliberately made himself and his expertise available (I think they didn't suspect he did it at first - must be the only way that this logically makes sense) so that he would be involved in attempts to cure it - and he would be there ready to sabotage the attempt.

However I agree that a zombie plague does make a lot of things much more difficult, if the infected are going about attacking the uninfected.

How lax is bio-security at this lab?

C'mon this is fiction! Anyway in real life didn't a researcher in the US biological warfare research division allegedly mailed out anthrax, killing people, a few years ago. I say allegedly because he was never charged as he comitted suicide before they could. That's pretty lax bio-security.

This guy's coworkers, they can't be smart enough to be working on a cure for cancer if they can't spot the same things as this guy (the same potential to turn the current cure into a zombie disease). They can't spot, when the disease starts spreading, that it might be related to their work?

Curing cancer and turning people into zombies I don't think would be really on anyone's mind, as people working on novel cancer cures would be thinking solely on cellular processes. However if the zombie disease was an unforseen consequence of the antaognist tweaking the cure to do something negative then I'd buy that.

As Kamosis says, how is he going to hide this work from his coworkers?...Management might be suspicious if they think he's using their funding to do other work on the sly

I'd go with psychotick's suggestion that he's doing it DIY outside a lab. Believe me, had loads of bio-chem PhD friends at my time in uni, and the pace of change in this fields is quite frankly unbelieveable, they tell me. You can do things with thousands of pounds worth of kit that take an afternoon that ten years ago would have cost a lab millions and taken three years.

Also, if this scientist is working to cure cancer, and he's pretty close, why would he risk it all to resolve some petty dispute from years ago?

This is a very valid point - I think for someone to be bad and psychotic enough to brew a very nasty disease, because of some past experience - then it has to be a very powerfully negative experience.

Maybe abducted and tortured by a sadistic paedophile group when a child or perhaps homeschooled and kept away from the public by very cruel, sadistic set of parents/foster (sort of like the tooth fairy in Red Dragon)

[Luiglin]

To be honest I really like the plot for the terrorists. In reality their fanaticism would easily over rule any doubts about altering the vaccine. The bullied kid sounds like he would have had to be severely tramautised to make the changes. Hence if he was that bad would he be able to hold down such an important job?

[anthorn]

Yeah, when put like that I might just continue with the previous idea

[Venusian Broon]

Originally Posted by Luiglin

The bullied kid sounds like he would have had to be severely tramautised to make the changes. Hence if he was that bad would he be able to hold down such an important job?

We've got a full history of tramautised children that go on to wield massive power and do unspeakable evil: Hitler, Stalin, Ghengis Khan, etc... Leading your nation should be for the most responsible people, yes? Then our track record at putting the best people in the most important job is pretty poor!

However human beings do a remarkable good job at 'keeping it together' and appearing normal in the face of adversity and internally being completely messed up. And I'd say most people (including myself of course!) are messed up to some degree.

[Hex]

I'm sure you're perfectly sane, VB...

I was going to say: in my experience of university labs (admittedly I've never worked on a cure for cancer, but I do work right next to an entire building full of people who do) is that as long as you're making the project milestones (the things you said at the start you'd do) no one is going to come checking up on you unless what you do is expensive or disruptive. You can stay in the lab as late as you like -- all night if you want -- and there are plenty of opportunities to be in when no one else is. I bet all the samples etc are carefully labelled, but if you slip in a few extras marked misleadingly, it's fairly unlikely that anyone would check up on you. So -- from what I know of labs and their security (which isn't hugely impressive unless something worth money is being developed) you could write him developing the virus in the Uni lab without stretching credibility too far. Testing would be more difficult, assuming he is going to test it. Maybe he'd do that at home but I suspect that if he's developing something scary to punish people he might not bother with rigorous testing.

Lots of people who work in labs are fairly introverted, and not likely to interfere with someone else.

I also think that if you go the terrorist route you need to have some coherent reason why the terrorists are doing what they're doing -- and how they manage to interfere with the cure -- perhaps they have a sympathiser in the lab? I'd worry that 'terrorists did it' could be a way of avoiding all the reasons etc. Terrorists tend to do things for a reason and releasing a zombie apocalypse is pretty extreme (I'm not saying some apocalyptic sect wouldn't, just that you'd need to lay the groundwork)

[Venusian Broon]

oh forgot to add -

Cancer cure turning people into Zombies.

Wasn't that the macguffin that made zombies in the excruciatingly terrible 'I am Legend' with Will Smith.

(for gawds sake, read the novel first if you haven't watched the film. The book is brilliant but Hollywood managed to transmute this into utter s**te.)

Hex - don't worry, I'm boringly sane.

Also your description of Academic bio-chem lab security, behaviour and practices chimes exactly with my experiences (for example a Physics PhD like my self wandering about the Biochemical labs and not in the Physics labs where I should have been was never ever questioned!)

[Luiglin]

Agree that history shows us that individuals can do that. However, when matched against the terrorist idea, it just sounds more plausible in this present time.
The only potential problem I can see is that may need to be careful with the terrorists. Religion would be easy to use but I think too obvious.
How about a third option. Considering the current crop of revolutions and unrest how about a govt slant. One govt in panic releases something they believe will help them control their population?
Not sure if that has been done before.

[Kamosis]

Originally Posted by psychotick

Hi,

Oddly enough I just watched a doco the other night that answered your question - and I have to say it scared the carp out of me.

Hey, can you get me the name of this doco? Sounds interesting ^^