Bandages should require sterile materials(boiled rags)

been a while since I made bandages, but I think that they should either require 1 water and a fire/hotplate/etc to boil the rags in mid recipe. OR have boiled rags be a separate ingredient. imagine if you will, in RL:

You kill a zombie. you loot the zombie. you cut the looted T-shirt into rags. you use those filthy, disgusting, diseased rags to make bandages. you use those bandages on a bleeding wound. you get infected with who knows what, you die…

EDIT: I suppose that bleach or alcohol could also be used, but I can think of better used for each.

or just require a hotplate to make the bandages

I did list a hotplate as a required material, but even a hotplate by itself wouldn’t sterilize the bandages. you would still need water

Bandages already require alcohol or disinfectant to disinfect them.

Somewhat related idea/question: how hard would it be to make zombie clothing be cut into blood-soaked rags instead of normal ones?

With ugly hacks that would hurt the game: easy
Proper solution: lots of work

You’d need to change blood-soaked rags into regular rags with “blood soaked” tag. This tag would have to be respected and passed forward in crafting.
Just producing current blood soaked rags would render zombie clothing useless in all crafting and so would not be a proper solution.
Then you’d also need some good way to make “partially blood-soaked” clothing, so that making a duster with 30 rags and 1 blood soaked rags doesn’t create a “blood soaked duster”, but “duster with a bit of blood on it”.

Much easier to treat all rags as dirty-but-not-soaked. Like they are treated now, since you have to disinfect them when crafting bandages.

yes, you do have to disinfect them, but like I said earlier, I can think of much better uses for the liquor like molotovs, or getting drunk, or mixing partially with regular water to help purify the water for drinking(i guess it would be more like making a weaker alcoholic drink that was safe to drink, rather like the wines and meads of old).

Tbh, there is an easy recipe to convert blood-soaked rags into normal rags. And there would still be useful leather and wool and whatnot. Though it does look unelegant. Was just a random crazy thought.