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Game Theory: Resident Evil's Zombie Outbreak is Closer than You Think (Resident Evil 2)

Feb 27, 2020
If you see one of those things, no matter who they are, you can't hesitate. Take them out if you can, or run. *Tofu jumpscare* Hello Internet, welcome to Game Theory, the only online show that could credibly make an episode dedicated to the real-world possibilities of giant sentient tofu. Actually, uh, let me write that on my

theory

to-do list, because guess what? Resident Evil 2 is back and with it Capcom is sponsoring today's episode. HURRAAAAA!!! Which means it's time to see how the

zombie

apocalypse they created in the

game

is much

closer

to being real now than when the

game

was first released in 1998.
game theory resident evil s zombie outbreak is closer than you think resident evil 2
You see, with this remake, Capcom has rebuilt one of the most iconic in history. horror games from the ground up and, in the process, they've kept the best parts and removed, you know, some of the less good parts of the early 3D games. Out with the old tank controls and in with the over-the-shoulder camera that revolutionized the series in RE 4. Out with the scariest polygons 1998 could muster and in with new photorealistic 4k images that bring these unforgettable, chilling moments to the world. modern era, all while still telling the iconic stories of Leon and Claire. One is a rookie cop who has a serious case on Mondays.
game theory resident evil s zombie outbreak is closer than you think resident evil 2

More Interesting Facts About,

game theory resident evil s zombie outbreak is closer than you think resident evil 2...

The other is remarkably casual considering the horrible death surrounding it. "How are you?" "You know, just...survive." Even when she is surrounded by hordes of

zombie

s, Claire wants to catch that man. And you see, that's what I've always loved about RE 2: the characters and their stories. Leon on his first day, Claire trying to find her brother, a piece of tofu trying to survive, all wrapped up in a larger conspiracy of a science experiment gone horribly wrong, a super serum going off the rails causing a viral

outbreak

that throws everything Raccoon City in chaos. So now that I'm older and can make a living dissecting this kind of thing, I wanted to ask the question young MatPat always wanted to know: how close to reality are we to a real Resident Evil-style

outbreak

?
game theory resident evil s zombie outbreak is closer than you think resident evil 2
Are the T and G viruses we see transforming people into undead monsters a work of science fiction or scientific reality? I mean, science has changed a lot in the last 20 years. So should we start stocking up on healing sprays, hoping they don't turn us into Jill sandwiches? Let's find out. So the Resident Evil series is actually titled Bio Hazard in Japan and as the name Bio Hazard suggests, these games revolve around creating bio-agents that turn people into monsters. These dangerous medical cocktails are designed by the

evil

Umbrella Corporation to create bio-organic weapons that can be sold to the highest bidder.
game theory resident evil s zombie outbreak is closer than you think resident evil 2
But before we explore these viruses themselves, let's start with Umbrella. If we look at the company's history, its work on bioweapons actually begins with the mission to collect all the world's deadly viruses. They're like a Pokémon trainer, but instead of Pikachu and Eevee, they're capturing Ebola and Smallpox, and it's here where we have our first disturbing intersection with reality. You see, in the game, the type of biological weapons collection that Umbrella is doing is prohibited due to a United Nations treaty called the "1972 Biological Weapons Convention," which prohibits countries from developing or stockpiling biological agents that can be used . like weapons.
In the game, the loophole Umbrella finds is collecting viruses under the guise of researching cures for them. The funny thing about all this is that none of this is fiction. The Biological Weapons Convention we see in Resident Evil is a real pact that actually governs most of the world, including the United States. And it was during the Nixon administration that the United States was forced to destroy its offensive biological weapons. But, as we see in the game, certain deadly biological agents still exist only under the guise of research. Smallpox is a great example of this exact loophole.
You see, smallpox was a terribly deadly disease with a 30% mortality rate and was the first disease eradicated from the face of the planet thanks to science. However, despite its complete eradication from the face of planet Earth, two strains of the disease still exist. One in the United States and one in Russia. The rational? More investigations, as we see Umbrella argue in the game. Only here the scientific community is very divided about whether there is anything we can really learn if we keep these things within our reach. Getting back to the game, Umbrella Corp's first big success, if you can call the design of a massive viral weapon a point in the "wins" column, is the creation of the T-Virus, a biological weapon designed specifically to infect and eliminate massive populations.
He ends up achieving this goal by turning everyone into zombies. Shortly after, the Golgotha ​​virus, or G virus, arrived, which is introduced into RE 2 and has a different objective: rapid cell growth, giving the injected a kind of biological immortality. But if it is too much, you will start to have mutations. It's the G virus that's responsible for creating the hideous mutant that constantly threatens your life throughout Resident Evil 2. Here's looking at you, buddy. *wink* Now, before we get to the zombie, supergrowth half of these things, let's take a minute to stop and look at the actual viral components first.
You see, viruses are fascinating. One of the most interesting things about them is that they are tiny, even when you compare them to cells, the smallest form of life. And I hear what you're

think

ing. If cells are the smallest form of life and viruses are smaller than that, are viruses alive? It's a good question and the answer is technically no. Viruses have DNA, but they do not have the biological hardware necessary to reproduce and instead have to rely on hijacking living cells to reproduce. Basically, they inject a living cell with its own DNA, that DNA then modifies the cell's DNA and creates copies of the virus.
Actually, in that sense they are like zombies. Both viruses and zombies seem alive, but in reality they are not. They require infecting other living beings to reproduce. Therefore, Umbrella Corps' choice of a viral zombie outbreak is surprisingly appropriate. But none of this answers the question of whether a real-life virus could cause the kind of mindless hordes we see in the T virus, or the extreme mutations you get with the G virus. However, the answers here are , again, yes and yes. Let's look at them one by one. First, it's important to note that the zombies created by the T virus are not your typical reanimated dead.
If they were, there would be no way a virus (or anything, for that matter) could replicate what we see in the game. But those are not the zombies we face in Resident Evil. According to Wesker's reports, the T-Virus' goal was to mutate those infected, but in most cases it ended up causing severe brain damage, resulting in mindlessly hungry and aggressive creatures. Zombies. And this is important, because there is already a real-world virus that, with some tweaks, could very easily qualify as a real-world replacement for the T-Virus. And that is anger. Like zombieism, the rabies virus is transmitted through infected saliva.
Have you ever wondered why Claire can take a bite or two and not get infected? Because saliva infection is far from perfect and has a high error rate. Rage? In the same way. And that's far from the only similarity. Rabies absolutely infects animals and causes them to become more aggressive, which coincides perfectly with the infected dogs we see throughout the Resident Evil franchise. In fact, it is not limited to just dogs either. All warm-blooded species can be infected with the rabies virus. The virus is even adapted to grow in the cells of cold-blooded vertebrates! And in one of those classic moves that make you say "what were they

think

ing?" Humans even infected birds with the stuff, you know, just for the fun of it.
So the next time you see infected alligators or bats attacking you in the bowels of Raccoon City, rest assured, as you fall asleep on the game's over screen, that it's totally plausible. And, when a human is infected, some of the symptoms we see align perfectly with the behavior we see in Resident Evil's zombie horde. Partial paralysis, which would explain the stumble. Inflammation of the brain, which would cause mental deterioration. Even hunger and the desire to bite. You see, rabies infects the central nervous system in three stages. Prodromal, excitatory and paralytic, but it is that second stage, also known as the "angry stage", where the host becomes hyperreactive and more prone to biting.
In fact, rabies is almost always transmitted through bites, thus causing the infected host to become aggressive. It is forcing the host's nervous system to transmit the rabies virus. Cunning, cunning, scary infectious virus. But, in an ironic twist, that's also one of the main things stopping it from causing a real zombie outbreak. You see, in the game we see that the T virus is spread primarily through bites and injections, which lines up perfectly with rabies. However, there is a third option: water. Both the Arklay Dam and Raccoon's wastewater treatment plant were contaminated with the virus, causing the city's water supply to rapidly spread it and infect more civilians.
And here's the thing: viruses can spread that way. SARS, hepatitis and even polio are waterborne viruses. An infected poop emoji goes down into the water and that water goes back into your mouth and BOOM! You are on a one-way trip to Infection Village, populate yourself. However, the trick is that rabies is not one of those types of viruses. It is not water based. It's not in the air either. It is primarily transmitted by bites, which limits its ability to infect large numbers of the population. However, that doesn't mean it isn't possible to change that. You see, viruses can be specially designed.
According to Samita Andreanski, a virologist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, quote: "Sure, you could imagine a scenario where you mix rabies with a flu virus to transmit it through the air, a measles virus to cause personality changes and then encephalitis. virus to cook your brain with fever, and thus increase your aggression even more, and add the Ebola virus to make you bleed from the insides. Combine all these things and you get something like a zombie virus." End quote. So the short story here is that, in the current state of medicine, if a company like Umbrella wanted to merge rabies with the characteristics of others waterborne viruses, you'd pretty much have the T-virus ready to go, which is definitely pretty scary, but while we're talking about mutations and medical engineering, let's also talk about the Big Bertha in the room: the Golgotha ​​or G-Virus from RE 2.
How could a virus cause mutations like the ones we see throughout this game? Well, look no further than Epidermodysplasia verruciformis, also known as tree man syndrome. And if you're in any way squeamish or sensitive to scary pictures, you might want to spend some time in the comments right now. Start a conversation. Make a new friend. Everyone who wants to be down there? Okay. So this is tree man syndrome. It's a rare genetic disorder that makes people vulnerable to human papillomavirus on the skin. You may have referred to these as HPV. Well, that 'V' is for Virus.
These viruses can cause skin tumors that resemble horns, have a wood or coral texture. They are basically warts that grow horribly out of control. That said, however, there may be an even

closer

parallel in the real world that is not, strictly speaking, a virus, but something similar to a virus. The G virus, like the previous T virus, was not initially created with the intention of transforming people into horrible monsters. Instead, the G virus was meant to improve our genetics, to give us a kind of biological immortality, basically to advance us to the next stage of human evolution.
While this quest to genetically engineer our cells into some kind of death-proof life form may seem like something out of science fiction, it actually has parallels to a real-world technology that works similarly to real life. viruses do it. Remember when I said that a virus can inject a cell with its own DNA? Well, there is also a process where the cell, as part of a method of fighting viruses in the future, will store the DNA of that virus in a blank part of the DNA sequence - that way it doesn't infect itself - but he also remembers for a while that he encounters the same sequence.
The DNA sequence that stores this viral information is called CRISPR: Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Super sexy name, I know. If you're a regular Film Theory viewer, I mentioned this briefly before when we talked about Luke Cage's super skin. Technically speaking, the CRISPR process is not a virus. Insert a sequenceof DNA into the cell, in the same way that the DNA of a virus would, essentially hijacking that part of the cell that is designed to react to viruses, and then from there modifying the DNA of the cell leaving an altered sequence that will go Let's replicate blah, blah, blah.
Etc, etc, TL; DR, this procedure works the same way a virus does. Basically. CRISPR uses a mixture of crRNA, which occurs naturally, and tracrRNA, which Steph: I'm Tracer now! Mat: No, not that Tracer. Steph: I SAID- I'm Tracer now! Matt: I said tracrRNA! Steph: I'M NOW RNA! Anyway, the whole mechanism is called a tracrRNA-crRNA chimera, but that's a real mouthful, so they just shortened it to, get this, guide RNA or, more commonly, gRNA. Sounds a bit like the G virus, don't you think? Perhaps Capcom just wanted to shorten 'nuclease complexed with a synthetic gRNA' to simply 'G virus'.
Honestly, I can't blame them. It's especially impressive considering Resident Evil 2 came out 17 years before this real-world technology was developed. Good for you for predicting the future. But here's the kicker: the first successful experiments using CRISPR for genetic improvement have already been performed on animals in China. They have created a beagle with twice the muscle mass of a normal beagle. And get ready, because CRISPR is already being tested in humans, with a Chinese scientist genetically modifying babies using the exact same method. Two girls who apparently survived the experiment now live with their mom and dad. This experiment has drawn widespread criticism from other geneticists and ethics boards who fear this may be too much, too soon, citing "Off-target effects caused by CRISPR" as their primary concern.
That is, perhaps altering gene editing is a little new and a little dangerous, and could cause some strange and unexpected mutations, just as we see happening in Resident Evil 2. When asked Derya Unutmaz, an immunologist at the Jackson Laboratory based in Connecticut, on whether this type of technology would pave the way for genetic enhancement, his response was, quote, "Oh, that's bound to happen. On a military level, you can imagine that you want to create super soldiers who can withstand all kinds of attacks." diseases and adverse weather conditions and carrying hundreds of kilograms. They were science fiction, but now we have the tools that could enable it." End quote.
Sounds eerily similar to the kind of thing the Umbrella Corporation was experimenting with throughout the Resident Evil series. So there you have it folks. In Back in 1998, the premise of storing and engineering viruses to create genetically enhanced humans was the stuff of fantasies or blockbuster sci-fi horror video game franchises. But today, Resident Evil 2's plot is far more realistic than anyone ever imagined. of us could have imagined back then. And in the end, isn't that the scariest part of these games? But hey, that's just a

theory

, a game theory. Thanks for watching! And hey, once again , if you're really interested in playing Resident Evil 2 for yourself, the download link is at the top of the description, and while yes, this episode is sponsored by Capcom, I highly recommend you check it out.
RE 2 is one of those iconic video game titles that changed the face of gaming forever. And now you have the chance to play the two iconic stories of Claire and Leon with all the modernization of beautiful 4k graphics and game optimizations like over-the-shoulder third-person perspective. I tell you, as someone who played the original and is now playing this remake, the realism of the graphics is out of this world. The lickers? Oh man! They gave me nightmares then and they give me nightmares now. So if you're a horror fan - hell, if you're just a fan of the all-time great video game stories that stand the test of time and helped shape the industry - you can't go wrong with the new Resident Evil 2 remake. . .
Again, the link is there, on the top line of the description. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have some herbs to combine. See you next week.

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