Blob’s Rate of Infection

So, I’ve gotten myself acquainted with the timeline on the wiki over the last year, and I came up with a theory after reading between the lines.

On the surface, it seems that what happens is that zero-hour coincided with unstable laboratory portals opening in New England, followed by more “natural” fissures in reality opening up elsewhere in the world, coinciding with fresh incursions by the Blob and creatures from unrelated planes of reality. Following this logic, the military abandoned New England for the purpose of dealing with the nasty gribblies appearing in the rest of the country.

That being said, the hypothetical speed at which the Blob could infect the entire world’s population if it were distributed from portals around the world would be, while extremely fast, still a longer process than five or so days, based in how low-intensity the pre-Cataclysm outbreak was. Because if this, I speculate that the additional portals around the world are actually red herrings, which only carried non-Blob entities, while the initial surge of the Cataclysm itself somehow encompassed the entire globe instead of just New England, dispersing the Blob in relatively small amounts everywhere at once.

Any thoughts on this? Forgive me if this was debunked or confirmed elsewhere. For all I know, the official timeline may be outdated considering its age.

The blob was infecting populations pre cataclysm. You can find this stuff out from the Waste sarcophagi computers and the Doctor Quests in the Refugee shelter and possibly a few other terminals i don’t remember. It leaked from science experiments and poor waste management into the ground and then water and spread from there initially. Depending on how many countries were doing blob experiments for mutagenic super solders it could be all over.

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I remember, and I mentioned it in my original post. The thing is there is a noticeable explosion in terms of sheer intensity following the Cataclysm. Then it seems like everyone on the planet is ready to become a zombie in a matter of hours.

If the news papers are anything to go by it sounds like zombies were an epidemic a decent ways before the cataclysm itself, assuming the cataclysm was as catastrophic as it sounds so it could be that other effects simply culled the population which was already thoroughly infected or something about the cataclysm breaching a connection to some gestalt consciousness of the blob or however they work triggering the more lethal effects to trigger more quickly in a majority of people. There really isn’t much to go on as to what the cataclysm itself was that I’ve found so it’s hard to build a good picture of what actually happened during it. Even the effects outside the world are a little vague and sometimes contradictory.

As far as the pre-Cataclysm outbreak is concerned, it was 15 days before the Cataclysm. That being said, the course of events is indeed depicted as chaotic, and likely intentionally so. My theory tries to clarify what I thought was slightly odd. I have no idea if I’m right.

It would seriously be awesome though if a revamped timeline was made which included more detail.

Considering I’m not even sure how much official lore there actually is, it may well be that it’s just something not necessarily set in stone. Hopefully it’ll continue getting fleshed out as time goes on, especially since it should probably be pretty well seared into any survivors minds.

I think the game does pretty well at showing different perspectives regarding the events leading up to the cataclysm along with obvious signs of a govenemnt cover up, the computers guarded by turrets in labs usually have some information regarding the events surrounding the discovery of mutagen, experiments conducted and breaches in security. When you have newspapers talking about a new drug turning people green and hostile, a probable reference (imo) to zombies while these labs are conducting experiments that show a much clearer understanding of what is going on it shows SOMEONE was in the know and was covering it up. With that in mind (just like in RL) you should probably take what you read in the papers with a moderately sized Persian salt mine, honestly though the biggest screw up in the cataclysm was which ever dipshit reprogrammed the automated security systems. Humanity might have had a decent chance if it wasn’t for that (until/unless the rifts expand and consume everything), they and their weapons are still the deadliest things rolling around in the wasteland after all.

Aye, what bothers me is whether or not anyone knew about this hypothetical scenario where everything gets infected practically at once.

Pretty sure one of the computers in the lab had an entry that theorised that everyone has been infected with small amounts of mutagen from contamination in the water supply, something about purifier (it was called by its official sample name) not working to purge it and them having to find another way to get it out of people to stop them reviving.

Yes, there is a possibility that everyone on the planet was infected before the Caraclysm if the Blob reached the ocean. It would be a hell of a coincidence if zombies started popping up in huge numbers at the moment of the Cataclysm though.

Like I said, I mostly blame the security system. With so many more killed by that, there was going to be a lot more zombies then there would of been. Then it would just snow balled, imagine zombies reviving in morgues, people dying then reviving in hospitals after getting shot up by turrets/bots etc

While zombies definitely seem to be the main focus of the game, it is very unlikely that they were the “cause” of the Cataclysm, as it was more of a “War of the Worlds” scenario, and don’t forget that it only takes place in New England; there’s no way of telling how it went down in other places, especially since New England’s Cataclysm was mostly without warning.
Newspapers also mention that most robots went haywire as another part of the invasion, probably because of another alien menace trying to invade. Plus craters aren’t just there, they’re actually the sites of nuclear explosions mainly.

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It doesn’t only take place in New England. The timeline states that the military pulled out after two days because of other portals appearing around the USA.

This is actually spoilers not present in any published lore:

The blob not only reached practically total infection rate before day 0, it even waited to accumulate a stock of infected corpses before mass-zombification started in order to insure successful conversion of the population

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That’s devious. I like it.

Seems like I was 80% correct.

Well, the game so far is only taking place in New England, and nobody knows if it has spread past new england. The military pulled out because of heavy military loses mostly due to robots and computers suddenly turning against them (speculative mainly). They’ve currently quarantined New England, it’s in the newspaper that you’re mentioning, and that so far is the most I know about for lore. Mainly flyers and newspapers though.

Yeah, new portals can happen even in-game, but the newspaper mentions they specifically moved out because the military wanted to quarantine New England.

Okay, but that’s explicitly wrong. They pulled out because new portals were showing up across the country.

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