Questions tagged [diseases]
For questions related to a disorder (illness, disease and sickness) that affects the function or structure of an organism.
249
questions
6
votes
5answers
880 views
What condition could cause chronically reddened sclera?
I have a character whose eye whites are bright red, and I'd like to make some attempt to justify why.
This character's species has eyes that generally become bloodshot in the same way and under the ...
4
votes
2answers
98 views
What would a heterozygote advantage against rabies look like?
Some heterozygote advantages in humans are:
People with sickle-cell trait are resistant to malaria, but people with sickle-cell disease tend to die young.
Depending of the source we believe, people ...
-3
votes
1answer
65 views
Could internal exposure to electromagnetic radiation be contagious or leave a trace? [closed]
This is linked to another question I asked a few days ago but my story concerns an inter-dimensional consciousness that lures children into itself by manifesting as magical wonderlands with wacky ...
1
vote
1answer
66 views
How much ionizing radiation would a baby need to absorb to develop acute myeloid leukaemia by the time they were 8?
My story concerns an inter-dimensional consciousness that lures children into itself by manifesting as magical wonderlands with wacky characters (think a creepy Sesame Street or Lazy Town).
The real ...
12
votes
9answers
2k views
Would a somewhat benign "vampiric" virus be doomed to infect everyone?
In one of the books of the The Witcher series Geralt has been told by a vampire (Regis, if I recall) that it was not true that vampirism could be spread by bite. He elaborated that the whole idea was ...
2
votes
1answer
89 views
Genetic disease that makes thermoregulation voluntary
I wonder if the disease I invented is realistic or a total fiction.
There is a real life genetic disease called congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (or Ondine's curse, if you want). People ...
2
votes
6answers
846 views
what is a medical condition that makes you weaker and weaker (that affects teens) [closed]
I'm writing a story and one of the characters have a medical condition,
they are 16/17 they're gonna die soon
there's no cure, just treatment
they can still attend school and walk around without ...
5
votes
2answers
186 views
Would merpeople contract diseases from land?
In working on the merpeople for my story - very basic, classic merpeople - they are humans underwater with fish tails. I've questioned whether they would contract diseases. It seems that they would in ...
4
votes
3answers
422 views
A genetic disorder that makes people unable to feel itch
I know that congenital insensitivity to pain exists and is autosomal recessive. There is a village in Sweden where 40 cases of this rare genetic disease were reported.
I am writing a story with a ...
4
votes
2answers
75 views
Heterozygote advantage against influenza/flu
Some heterozygote advantages in humans are:
People with sickle-cell trait are resistant to malaria, but people with sickle-cell disease tend to die young.
Depending of the source we believe, people ...
5
votes
2answers
118 views
Is my story's treatment of tuberculosis realistic?
A side character, a sister of my main character, has been stricken with an unidentifiable disease in an early 19th century circa 1800 - 1850 setting. She's had the disease for a few years. Country ...
19
votes
10answers
6k views
What would be the average civilian's first hints that a zombie apocalypse was near in a pre-mass internet world?
I'm a big fan of zombie fiction, but one aspect that is rarely touched upon is how things look in the first stages of an apocalypse scenario. If you were an average civilian in the mid 90's when the ...
10
votes
5answers
2k views
How do Roman analogues purify air in a mushroom forest?
The Valyn are a Roman analogue who have been exiled to live in a hostile mushroom forest with daily mist in the vein of a Cloud forest. The air is absolutely brimming with mold, spores, and ...
2
votes
2answers
104 views
If the world was perfect, how would we know how to decipher imperfections?
I've always wondered that if everything was always "good", how would we know that there was something "less good" to distinguish the "good" from the "less good"?...
17
votes
9answers
4k views
What disease could my time traveler find a definitive 'cure' for, without recognizing the specific disease
I've been toying with a story of person sent to a alternate reality that mirrors medieval Europe, but not necessarily with identical history/countries. The time traveler would earn the trust/support ...
6
votes
3answers
109 views
How species-specific are tropical diseases and parasites?
Following on from a recent question about animals, concerning a group of people traveling sideways in time, to a world that resembles Earth as it would have been had humans never evolved, it occurs to ...
4
votes
1answer
75 views
Infectious diabetes [closed]
I want to know if the disease I invented is realistic or a total fiction.
I imagined a hypothetical viral disease that causes a contagious form of diabetes. It is only transmitted by blood. The virus ...
4
votes
4answers
605 views
Can a virus that causes forced evolution exist?
I recently watched a movie called The Cave. In the movie there's a group of spelunkers that get trapped in the cave with a bunch of blind monsters. towards the end of the movie, we find out that the ...
17
votes
10answers
5k views
"A disease killed a king in six months. What disease was it?" Fantasy, some magical healing
I'm currently trying to plot out a novel, the sequel to my Salamander and Brothers. Part of the plot involves a succession struggle. I mention in one of the previous books, set about fifteen years ...
-2
votes
3answers
191 views
How could civilization deal with a prion pandemic? [closed]
Prions are misfolded proteins that cause neurodegenerative diseases. They are smaller than viruses and they are the smallest known infectous pathogen. Somehow they could reproduce on their own and the ...
32
votes
9answers
8k views
Can we get rid of all illnesses by a year of Total Extreme Quarantine?
Earth-Year: 2618.
Location: Planet Hope, Proxima Centauri.
Terraformation status: 97.8% Earth-like.
Population: 128.596.
The residents of this planet live in a paradise-like environment. The gravity ...
5
votes
3answers
264 views
Infectious hemophilia
I want to know if the disease I invented is realistic or a total fiction.
Coagulopathies or bleeding disorders, like hemophilia, and Von Willebrand's syndrome, are diseases in which the blood's ...
10
votes
3answers
207 views
How can an illness make one's eyes turn green?
I'm designing an illness found in a set group of people. Its effects worsen over time. They suffer from various issues such as nose and mouth bleeding, along with some form of anemia, lingering ...
1
vote
1answer
134 views
A genetic disorder that makes people look like an elephant and a whale
I want to know if the genetic syndrome I invented is logical or just a total fiction.
There are seven symptoms:
Gigantism;
Truncal obesity;
Alopecia universalis (the complete absence of hair all over ...
2
votes
1answer
155 views
Genetic disorder that would be the opposite of achondroplasia
Achondroplasia is a form of dwarfism that is characterized by short limbs and normal-sized abdomen, torso, neck, and head.
Could there be a form of gigantism that is characterized by long limbs and ...
2
votes
3answers
94 views
I need a disease or illness in young adults [closed]
I'm writing a story that involves the main character finding out she has some kind of disease or illness and how she deals with it immediately after. She's 20 years old and has been healthy up to this ...
7
votes
3answers
250 views
Drop dead disease
Diseases kill people by messing up with some mechanism that is necessary for life. This generally means that they have a progression - for respiratory diseases, you will have difficulty breathing for ...
4
votes
3answers
219 views
How could zombies infect the population of an entire town? [closed]
There is a zombie apocalypse scenario where one zombie appeared in a small town in America. Would it be possible or plausible for them to take over? My problem is that the military would just quickly ...
5
votes
3answers
174 views
A Rabid Black Death, Part I: How Virulent Would it Be?
Our first record of rabies, the infamous foaming madness disease, dated all the way back to 2000 BC. The foaming at the mouth and excessive aggression are among the most recognizable symptoms of ...
19
votes
14answers
5k views
Would a Pre-Columbian America with its own plagues still be vulnerable to Old World diseases?
Most of the Native Americans in our history were killed by smallpox, measles, etcetera, and this video makes a good case for why: though the Americas had cities of their own, they lacked many options ...
5
votes
3answers
185 views
How can a government really track the source of infection during a pandemics?
How can a government really track the source of infection during a pandemics
An airborne pandemic is affecting the entire country and the hospitals are overflowing with patients. The number of severe ...
3
votes
6answers
257 views
Could a bug sting induce a human body to explode?
The setup is similar to a funny horror movie or like Troma movies. Deaths only happen to insignificant, unnamed characters.
However, I would like to have some plausible science back-up (maybe slightly ...
2
votes
1answer
125 views
A very strange and specific pathogen
The pathogen is dormant, spread amongst the lymph nodes and other places within an animal commonly found in places of relatively high temperatures, near volcanoes and similar locations. It remains ...
5
votes
2answers
234 views
How to Safely Sterilize Europa?
In The Lost Fleet series, it's established that a genetically-engineered disease was accidentally released on Europa, which wiped out all the colonists present. By the time of the series, an insane ...
6
votes
4answers
360 views
Closest real neurological disorder to the state of being an eldritch entity?
This is going to take some explaining, but the basic idea is thus:
In the world I'm creating, if matter is exposed to enough magical energy it ceases to respect the laws of physics and becomes known ...
6
votes
3answers
820 views
Lethal Pandemic
I'm looking to create a lethal disease for a sci-fi book. The plot surrounds a group of rich people taking teenagers off earth to start a new life away from this illness. The pandemic has been going ...
1
vote
1answer
110 views
I need to find a disease [duplicate]
I am currently working on character building in preparation for my first movie screenplay. One of my characters is a 15-17 year old girl with a terminal disease. Here are some requirements for the ...
17
votes
16answers
6k views
How do I ensure that two characters survive the black death without making them naturally immune?
Everyone in my community is collapsing to the ground and dying painfully. My husband, he is one of the few remaining men to bury the dead and I worry that soon I'll be left alone.
How do I ensure that ...
4
votes
4answers
328 views
How would WW1 trench warfare be fought if a biological weapon was released on one side by the other?
Sawdust bread, trenches with mud reaching up to your ankles, artillery pounding each other nearly 24/7, troops crossing no-man’s land only to be cut down by heavy machine gun fire...
Trench warfare ...
1
vote
2answers
110 views
Diseases that require long-term hospital admission [closed]
Is there an illness wherein
1) it can be diagnosed in teens(16-18 preferably) and could eventually lead to death.
2) it requires long-term admission to the hospital because the condition may ...
1
vote
2answers
210 views
Changing humans to their mirror image versions to become immune to infectious diseases
If we could replace DNA, RNA and the ribosomes in our cells by their mirror image versions, then everything would work in the same way, except that the chirality of all molecules would have been ...
9
votes
1answer
836 views
Placebo-worthy drug?
Are there any medicine out there specifically used to treat serious illnesses (it could be something as simple as painkillers to something for a very rare chronic illness) that could be swapped out ...
2
votes
1answer
37 views
What disease prevents donating bone marrow? [closed]
In my story character signed agreement by which he had to donate bone marrow to person in need of it in exchange of money. Right after signing agreement, character received money (lets say its enough ...
3
votes
3answers
114 views
In futuristic domed cities terrified of pandemics, how would spread be prevented between domes?
With the Covid-19 pandemic currently underway, it's a bit easier to imagine a world where the virus is more lethal and even brutal measures are used to contain the spread of diseases. In the scenario ...
24
votes
13answers
5k views
How does a disease cause its hosts to travel more?
Diseases that cause changes in the behaviour of their hosts are nothing new. Rabies causing animals to bite others is the best known example, but there are plenty of other (often nightmarish) ...
4
votes
4answers
373 views
How would a world occupied by just teenagers occur? [duplicate]
My story is set in a post apocalyptic setting where there are only teenagers and children. Also, cities are overrun with knee high grass and large lakes. Animals have evolved and have gotten more ...
2
votes
1answer
136 views
Can 2019-nCoV be altered to be carried by the wind?
After surveying customers about their new product, 2019-nCoV™, E.V.I.L. Inc. realized that many of them would pay for an upgrade which allows for the virus to be carried by the wind itself in order to ...
2
votes
1answer
103 views
How could a pathogen feed on silicon while infecting humans? [closed]
How could a pathogen feed on silicon in computers while infecting humans with a high degree of success?
The world here is a few years away from general AI and the commercialization of GM humans. Non-...
0
votes
1answer
211 views
Time travelling virus anno 1900
One of the most well known, but commonly ignored issues of time travel is this:
Due to the fact that viruses and bacteria constantly evolve, diseases that we are today resistant to have never before ...
1
vote
1answer
120 views
What would a moderately more advanced society on Earth do to stop a pandemic? [closed]
The Coronavirus is spreading all over the world and it seems to be airborne, highly contagious and hard to contain. If I survive, I want to write a pandemic story. Let’s say there is an airborne virus ...
