Patient Zero

Lets say, theroeticly, that I've managed to cross the mutability of aids with the pnumonic bubonic plauge and made the Symptoms manifest after 4 weeks but made the contagious phase start after one day and released Patient Zero At JFK airport, how long do I have till I can rule this barren wasteland of a planet, and would you folks, excluding scrappy like the vaccine?

Far too many variables to give you a precise answer. For one thing, you never specified how your virus is trasmitted. If it is still a sexually transmitted disease, like HIV, then if your patient zero is a complete loser and fails to hook up with someone within four weeks I think the best you can hope for is to have your disease is for it to show up as a rather interesting footnote in a medical journal somewhere.

If, instead, you somehow make it airborne or spread through touch, the effects could spread globally, but it is difficult to say how many people may become infected because it really depends on where your Patient Zero goes inside the airport and who he or she interacts with. If the patient goes in when traffic is relatively light, stands fairly far away from people, and takes a flight to a remote location then the damage may be fairly well contained. The odds of all of these events occuring are pretty remote. But it is also remote that the patient will infect everyone in the airport, including employees of the airport and airlines. The odds are that it is will somewhere in the middle. Infecting a large portion who then spread the disease globally.

Another variable is just how devasting is this disease? Just because it mutates rapidly does not mean it is life threatening. One of the most rapidly mutating disease out there is the common cold. HIV is actually a very fragile and very slow developing virus. In fact, it is so weak that it dies soon after leaving bodily fluids. Whether it could exist as an airborne virus is debatable. What makes HIV a problem is that it is a retrovirus and, as such, it alters genetic code within a cell and no matter how many times you try to remove it, it comes back because the cells themselves have DNA to make this virus. Other than the fact that HIV uses the cells that are used to keep this from being a problem as their host, HIV would not be nearly as life threatening as it is. Even untreated, HIV typically takes years to kill an infected person. With HAART treatment, a person can actually live for decades asymptomatically.

So, first we have to establish how your disease spreads. Then we need to find out if it actually does kill people or just seriously miff the population at large and succeed only in killing off those who cannot afford treatment. So, your scenario does not always result in a barren wasteland, I'm afraid. Even then, how do you plan on ruling? Have you considered all the complicated facets in wasteland management?

You better leesten to this one. I tell you, if I had known how much of a headache it would be to rule Strongbadia I might never have seized control, man. Now the tire is wanting to get the vote. You just can't sit back with a cold one and take it easy. It's a constant thing.