What to do in case of lycanthropic outbreak?

[Berserker]

It wouldn't be so easy to escape this lycan outbreak if it happened on a spaceship in deep space.

Er...what, exactly, is difficult about shoving someone out of an airlock?

It can be pretty tough. Just ask Ripley. She did it twice.

[Figarou]

It wouldn't be so easy to escape this lycan outbreak if it happened on a spaceship in deep space.

Er...what, exactly, is difficult about shoving someone out of an airlock?

It can be pretty tough. Just ask Ripley. She did it twice.

Lucky for her that it wasn't disabled.

Fooling one into an airlock may not be difficult. Just try luring a few dozen into it.

[Terastas]

It wouldn't be so easy to escape this lycan outbreak if it happened on a spaceship in deep space.

Which is precisely why I was one of the few kids that didn't want to be an astronaut when he grew up.
Seriously, why would you even bring that up? There are six billion people on Earth and only eight or nine of them are out in orbit.

So if I did somehow wind up during a lycanthropic outbreak in outer space, you know what I'd do? Turn to the real astronauts and ask "what do we do?!"

[Shadow Wulf]

Anyway, being these are werewolves and not zombies, we have some advantags and disadvantages. Disadvantage wise, we now have superbeasts running around and a lot of them at that. Werewolves will have endurance, strength and speed as well as a wolf like intellgence which is far far more useful then being brain dead. Werewolves will be hunting humans down like deer and would be able to overwhelm many in a short space of time. On to top of that some more insane inderviduals would go to them and would risk spreading this outbreak around. On top of that, you can't just wait them out like zombies. These creatures will mean to survive.

Well someone remembers what I said over chat about the disadvantage of werewolves and how we would really be worse off with them than zombies. What really makes werewolves harder to kill is how mobile they are, they can jump high, most faster than any of us, and they will use this advantage to out flank us whenever possible, while a zombie would just go at one predictable direction.....towards you. Werewolves can set up an ambushes and can lure you in a trap and with their heighten senses, you can bet they will have plenty of success. Our only advantage as humans is pure fire power and do our best to outwit them.

Now, another thing that some people haven't though up of yet is what happens if the virus caused for an instant transformation under the light of the full moon, even if that person was just bitten 10 minutes prior (like Underworld:Evolution) or worst yet, they can be dead not to long ago and be reanimated by the werewolf venom and undergo an immediate transformation. That could double the population of werewolves during a full moon, you can kill one werewolf and two more can simply take it's place. Thus adding an advantage that would be mostly for a zombie, but now an even more efficient predator can have sheer numbers too when the time is right.

As for me, I too have an Air Force base near me and the convenient thing is it's right next to the sea and it's pretty much along a harbor. So win win for me ^^. But then again, wouldn't everyone try to head to some sort of military complex? And what if several people got bitten or scratch, the moment they transform and start turning everyone else into them then the whole base is compromised.

But at least we are all protected with the second amendment and can just blast away werewolves with our pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, carbines and IED. Good thing non of us pack members live in Europe, right? RIGHT?

[Figarou]

Seriously, why would you even bring that up? There are six billion people on Earth and only eight or nine of them are out in orbit.

yes, it's a smaller scale being on spaceship with only 8 crew members. But having no place to go in order to get away from the outbreak makes it more difficult. On a planetary scale, imagine the entire population being affected. The only place to go is off the planet. But there's that chance of having that outbreak follow you.

[Terastas]

Fig? Two problems there:

1) You can't go into orbit by yourself. You still need somebody in Houston looking out for you. You couldn't launch the rocket if you were alone, and if you had a full crew together, you'd have to effectively give some of them the finger by leaving them behind.

2) If the entire planet is infected and you're the very last man on Earth. . . What's the point? What are you going to do when you get there?

Even if you lived smack dab in the middle of the continent, it would still be easier to reach the ocean than it would be to get into outer space. Plus you would only have to worry about where your food and drinking water is going to be coming from as opposed to your food, drinking water and oxygen.

Honestly, I think if you were in a team of survivors, even if the entire world was infected, if you suggested going into space, the others would just declare you the designated meat shield.

[Figarou]

You're right. We can't go to outer space if this outbreak happens today. But what does the future hold? At this point, we don't know. In the 1960s, they said by the year 2000 we'll have flying cars. Well, where are they?

As for an "outbreak" of any type, we will never know the outcome. We probably won't be alive to find out. We are still trying to figure out what REALLY killed the dinosaurs.

My original responce was to see where would you go if this happened on a spaceship. On planet earth, there's many places to go. Underground, in the deepest ocean, etc.

[Terastas]

At this point, we don't know. In the 1960s, they said by the year 2000 we'll have flying cars. Well, where are they?

The Roadable Plane.

As for the dinosaurs, we actually do know, but it's taking a long time because those creationist [expletive]s keep insisting they were destroyed by God or killed during Noah's flood.

But please, can we just keep the discussion linked to present times? Time might change our survival strategies, but we can't plan for something this stupid and random fifty years in advance.

The aforementioned roadable plane, for example, might change a lot of our survival strategies if it ever enters mass production and the open market. . . But it hasn't, so it's not an option.

Really, what's going to happen if you write out your werewolf/zombie survival strategy as taking place fifty to a hundred years in the future and the plague comes before then? Well, then you're fujunked, aint' cha?

[Figarou]

Really, what's going to happen if you write out your werewolf/zombie survival strategy as taking place fifty to a hundred years in the future and the plague comes before then? Well, then you're fujunked, aint' cha?

Hmmmmmm. Fifty years is within a human lifetime. There shouldn't be any major changes. But with technology making quick advances, you're probably right. If it was 500 to 1000 years, then I would be fujunked.

[Aki]

You're right. We can't go to outer space if this outbreak happens today. But what does the future hold? At this point, we don't know. In the 1960s, they said by the year 2000 we'll have flying cars. Well, where are they?

If the outbreak happened in the future, wolfie would be screwed, period. Look at the past couple hundred years and how weaponry and defensive technology has advanced since then.

Teeth won't do much against an exoskeleton and fur is no protection against a metal slug hurled at twice the speed of sound.

[Figarou]

You're right. We can't go to outer space if this outbreak happens today. But what does the future hold? At this point, we don't know. In the 1960s, they said by the year 2000 we'll have flying cars. Well, where are they?

If the outbreak happened in the future, wolfie would be screwed, period. Look at the past couple hundred years and how weaponry and defensive technology has advanced since then.

Teeth won't do much against an exoskeleton and fur is no protection against a metal slug hurled at twice the speed of sound.

heh. I bet the radiation from my cell phone could stop them in thier tracks.

[Wingman]

I suppose in the eventuality of an outbreak of lycanthropy, characterized by diminished intellectual capacities, increased physical abilities including heightened senses of smell and hearing, a permanent gestalt form, and an ability to garner converts from the mass majority of the human populace. I would have to say my best plan would be the exact same as most other survival plans, save that it would involve things to mask or overwhelm my personal scent. Even if said tactic only consisted of splashing bleach over myself and the surroundings I'd settle for them not knowing exactly where I am, even if they can tell I'm in the general location.

I suppose this might be one occasion where cities, or at least the outskirts, might be useful, as to my knowledge many cities have strong odors of their own, garnered from generations of humans. It might be a bit tricker for the lycanthropes to locate survivors when everything smells like humans, or all the crap we left behind. I can see some serious potential for doing things like retreating to the upper floors of sky scrapers, or other tall buildings where you might be out of sight and out of mind. Yes, that's me assuming that the lycanthropes aren't going to be able to spiderman it up the sides of the buildings(a feat which makes little sense, since wolves aren't exactly climbers, and even if you have sharp and strong claws the buildings are still made of concrete, steel, and glass. If it was wooden buildings I could understand, but not for concrete).
I'd say that you have all the supplies you'd need to fortify a sky scraper already provided for you. Clog up some stairwells with desks and other debris, make some mop and broom spears, and you're essentially good to go. I suppose if someone actually did that, they'd forget the elevator until they hear the sound of the opening doors behind them as the survivors are celebrating having blocked off the stairs.

[Aki]

You're right. We can't go to outer space if this outbreak happens today. But what does the future hold? At this point, we don't know. In the 1960s, they said by the year 2000 we'll have flying cars. Well, where are they?

If the outbreak happened in the future, wolfie would be screwed, period. Look at the past couple hundred years and how weaponry and defensive technology has advanced since then.

Teeth won't do much against an exoskeleton and fur is no protection against a metal slug hurled at twice the speed of sound.

heh. I bet the radiation from my cell phone could stop them in thier tracks.

Haha. Is it one of those big walkie-talkie looking things? I remember those! Er, vaguely.

And the suitcase phones. God those were funny.

I suppose in the eventuality of an outbreak of lycanthropy, characterized by diminished intellectual capacities, increased physical abilities including heightened senses of smell and hearing, a permanent gestalt form, and an ability to garner converts from the mass majority of the human populace. I would have to say my best plan would be the exact same as most other survival plans, save that it would involve things to mask or overwhelm my personal scent. Even if said tactic only consisted of splashing bleach over myself and the surroundings I'd settle for them not knowing exactly where I am, even if they can tell I'm in the general location.

That reminds me, things other than lethal weapons are actually viable in this scenario. A taser is every bit as useful as a pistol.

And you can get a can of bear mace, too! I'm sure any werewolf wouldn't be very pleased to get a facefull of that!

[Scott Gardener]

In the event that a violent lycanthropy outbreak happens, humans would be screwed. If werewolves were not motivated to preserve human infrastructure, then within a fairly short time, all humans would be either converted to werewolves or killed, and perhaps eaten, depending upon one's interpretation of what lycanthropy entails. (Pun not intended.)

Wingman:

Well, I do believe my plan is more or less chronicled in the film 300, save that we Spartans desire silver blades, and hafts of mighty oak. The last anyone sees of me will likely be after my silver sword bends into uselessness, and I'm reduced to using my teeth to tear out werewolf throats.

Yeah... (nods) Right. M'kay. Good luck with that.

Regarding the military options:

Every once and awhile, a serious military power gets its hiney handed to it by a seemingly lesser force, because that force has figured out a paradigm shift. During the American Revolutionary War, for instance, the British forces expected to hose down American insurgents. The Red Coats marched in huge formations, ranks of soldiers firing guns in unison, moving across the land like tanks. But, the American colonists had friends in the area, the natives who had populated the area several millennia earlier and had never seen this kind of warfare. To the Native Americans, the grouping of large masses of soldiers in one place seemed absurd, as it just made them easy target practice. Thus, hiding and guerrilla warfare had begun. (OK, I have to say it. In AD 1776, War was beginning. King George III: What happen? Someone set us up the tea. We get signal. What? Main papers turn on. King George: It's you! Thomas Jefferson: How are you gentlemen? All your Colonies are belong to U.S.!)

There are plenty of other examples. Modern warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan is quite different from, say, World War II. If the wars today were just about claiming ground, American and British forces might have stormed Iraq with tanks and, who knows?--maybe had the place in a year or two, but only at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. I won't bog us down in the sordid debate about what could or should have been done (and I strongly discourage anyone else from detouring this thread down that politically landmine-strewn path), but suffice it to say, the use of everything from improvised explosives to remote-controlled unmanned robotic planes has made the idea of digging trenches and lobbing grenades no longer a viable strategy today. But, that the wars have lasted this long, when one side has the remote controlled robots and a multi-billion dollar budget while the other has twenty-year-old used trucks, smuggled arms, and a finite supply of religious fanatics willing to blow themselves up is a testament that budget and technology alone doesn't win a war.

Surviving a werewolf outbreak in space:

Wha? Huh? How did we go from lycanthropy spreading across Earth to a battle on a spaceship? One thing I might try is modifying the tachyon emitter to transmit harmonic interference via inverted polarity. We could use the trans-warp phase coils to reroute power through the auxillary conduits, but I'd only have about thirteen seconds, so we'd really have to make it count. Or, we could send out a Priority One distress call and wait for Kirk or Picard to save the day.



What would I do?

As a sheer survival strategy, I'd try to find a way to get lycanthropic myself. (Yeah. That has nothing to do with my therianthropic bend or my fascination with werewolves. I'm just employing basic coping skills.)

[Terastas]

The only thing I'm going to say about the Iraq war is that it's not a good model because the American military had no clearly defined opponents except for the first month. Saddam Hussein's army got wiped out in a matter of days, but the "war" stretched out as it did because Bush was using the troops as security. The army was fighting terrorism the same way the police fight crime: indefinitely.

What Bush did in Iraq would be kind of like if Roosevelt and the American forces had taken out the Axis, then decided to stick around in Germany for as long as it would take for every single German citizen to stop hating the Jews. It was a completely unrealistic expectation for Bush to think Iraq would be left with a crime rate of 0%, which is what he, McCain etc. were effectively trying to do with plans to "stay until the mission is done."

You can fight crime, but you can't fight crime and win. You can fight and defeat criminal organizations, but crime in general is not going to go away. The Iraq War was over in a matter of weeks -- it's the Iraq Occupation that's been dragging on forever.

Mind you that I'm not criticizing the Iraq war so much as pointing out that it stopped being a war only a matter of weeks into it, therefore it's not a sufficient illustration. Assuming they are below average intelligence, a group of werewolves would be considered within the definition of an opposing army, therefore it would be simple enough to determine when the war is actually over: when every last werewolf is neutralized.

[Aki]

Military stuffs

Uh, Scott, there's a big difference here, though. Those American Militia men, those Iraqi Insurgeants, those Afghani terrorists?

They're intelligent. They're people-smart. They have the ingeniouity to take inferior equipment and use it to set up traps, ambushes, etc. to screw over a superior equivalent.

The werewolves in this scenario? They're animals. They're not people smart. They're comparable to the Raptors from Jurassic Park - except infectious.

[Silent Hunter]

As Aki said, comparing intellgent self aware beings to animals is not a fair comparrison. Sure werewolves can do some tricks and the military may not be so apt with dealing with them at first but quickly enough, the military will steamroll them with superior tracking, equipment, weapons and firepower. Sorry, that's just the way it is. Werewolves have no real long term goal except spread and survive. They cannot plot a military campaign or any real long terms goals outside their natural parimiters.

At first I expect there to be confusion but as it goes on, the military will adapt and attack. They will go to every effort to contain the threat and if the country is still functioning to a degree then it will be made sure the military can keep up their job in containing and destroying werewolves. Whatever weapons are needed. It would not be pretty or nice but it's the reality of it all.

Also, even if the military DID lose a battle, it would not mean it would of lost its war. The military wont crumple after one enagement and would fight on. Add in people who could fight, police etc and you'd have a strong effort to stop it all. If the country was weak enough then a joint effort from others may even take place (I mean, you don't want it to spread to other places).

Also I can imagine containment issues may get a lot of people killed. Infected or not. On top of that, loonies with guns (where applicable) will come out of the woodwork. It would be a messy messy event but humanity would live.

[Morkulv]

To quote AVP:

Whoever wins, we lose.

[Silent Hunter]

Err I'd consider humanity not being wiped out as a victory. Then again given the "nature" of some people on this site, it really varies.

[Morkulv]

Also depends on your definition of the word 'outbreak'.

[IndianaJones]

I don't get it why some people always want or dreamed of a Zombie/Werewolf Outbreak and have the werewolves as mindless bloodthirsty monsters that feasts on human flesh like zombies. If some of the masses really won't one, well tell the Government that. And the Government will create a real outbreak for them. So, most of them want to die or become mindless monsters? Or making a surviving scenario by supplying food, water, weapons, and shelter. So, they rescue other survivors and have them to support each other. It can be fun in games, but in real life!

[Aki]

I don't get it why some people always want or dreamed of a Zombie/Werewolf Outbreak and have the werewolves as mindless bloodthirsty monsters that feasts on human flesh like zombies. If some of the masses really won't one, well tell the Government that. And the Government will create a real outbreak for them. So, most of them want to die or become mindless monsters? Or making a surviving scenario by supplying food, water, weapons, and shelter. So, they rescue other survivors and have them to support each other. It can be fun in games, but in real life!

Cracked.com has, conveniently, answered your query for you.

Though it's also worth noting that the Outbreak thing is mostly a fantasy - the vast majority do not want one to really happen, but find the thought-exercise rather entertaining.

There's also the fact that if you're prepared for zombies, you're prepared for pretty much any disaster short of one that destroys your area entirely (And you can't really prepare for that one at all).

[Morkulv]

I don't get it why some people always want or dreamed of a Zombie/Werewolf Outbreak and have the werewolves as mindless bloodthirsty monsters that feasts on human flesh like zombies. If some of the masses really won't one, well tell the Government that. And the Government will create a real outbreak for them. So, most of them want to die or become mindless monsters? Or making a surviving scenario by supplying food, water, weapons, and shelter. So, they rescue other survivors and have them to support each other. It can be fun in games, but in real life!

Cracked.com has, conveniently, answered your query for you.

Funny as hell.

[Terastas]

I don't get it why some people always want or dreamed of a Zombie/Werewolf Outbreak and have the werewolves as mindless bloodthirsty monsters that feasts on human flesh like zombies. If some of the masses really won't one, well tell the Government that. And the Government will create a real outbreak for them. So, most of them want to die or become mindless monsters? Or making a surviving scenario by supplying food, water, weapons, and shelter. So, they rescue other survivors and have them to support each other. It can be fun in games, but in real life!

Cracked.com has, conveniently, answered your query for you.

Though it's also worth noting that the Outbreak thing is mostly a fantasy - the vast majority do not want one to really happen, but find the thought-exercise rather entertaining.

You might be surprised how many people actually do want something like that to happen, but for a very simple reason: they're a bunch of angsty emo [expletive]. They screwed up or made nothing out of their own lives, and it gives them comfort to think that it isn't going to matter either way because we're all going to Hell in the end.

Mind you that these people aren't exactly picky about how the world ends; they'll be just as happy with something out of the average Roland Emmerich movie (2012 looks like [expletive] BTW). It was supposed to have ended nine years ago, and when it didn't, suddenly 2012 was the big year to look forward to.

Regardless of how they think the world will end, however, they always seem to have the exact same expectation: they talk about it like they think they can just set up a lawn chair up on the hill and watch it all unfold. They expect they'll be the only one that's immune, or if they're really angsty, maybe they're like Strong Bad and they're hoping the zombies will let them fight on their side.

I'm willing to bet that for most people, it's only fun to talk about from a purely speculative viewpoint, seeing as we've all probably played a zombie game or passed judgment on some other moron's survival strategy as shown in the movies. But the people that really do want a zombie apocalypse, they just want to see everybody die except for them.

[Moonwatcher]

Well if it was zombies my originalplan would have been go to cold place like a mountain or somewhere that snows.
But werewolf not too sure how would get out of that one.