Reverting zombies to human

[Snaaty]

Hey. I have a quick question not worthy of a seperate thread, so I’ll ask here:

Is it possible (according to the lore), that zombies may be reverted to their previous human form?
Or did the blob destroy everything inside irreversibly?

If that would be possible, I can even imagine gear that lets you kill the blob within a zombie to bring that person back.

Although, the cataclysm world would quickly crumble, once all those NPCs are released. Give one of them a flamethrower, and they will do more damage than the zombies.

EDIT: Just went through the Outline and read that changing humans back is explicitly not a goal. However, perhaps that could be like a one-time action for a quest or something?

[Datanazush]

The problem is that all the zombies you see are blob infected humans who have died. Chances are, their brain has rotted to uselessness a long time ago.

[kevin.granade]

Hey. I have a quick question not worthy of a seperate thread, so I’ll ask here:

You have it backwards, there’s nothing wrong with posting a new thread, but there is a problem with cluttering up unrelated threads.

[SpaniardSlayer]

To become zombie, the person would need to have died while the blob inside is mature enough to reanimate the dead body. The person is already dead, the blob is just using the body as a puppet.

[i2amroy]

Yeah, removal of the blob from a zombie would just lead to a dead body. Living humans, on the other hand, can have the blob removed from them (thus meaning they don’t come back on death) through use of dimensional travel/teleportation. The problem is that every time this is done it weakens the boundaries, letting more denizens (including the blob) slip through the cracks. The cure is worse then the disease for the world.

[Arek_PL]

WARNING THIS POST CONTAIN SPOILERS ABOUT NOTES IN LAB TERMINALS

you can find notes what tell you something about cures and why they do not use this

"PE062, our “cure” for XE037 contamination, has neared perfection. Sadly, the production of PE062 is a costly and time-consuming process. What is more, the substance shows no effect on postmortem subjects whatsoever

“We have even more distressing news than the widespread XE037 contamination, there are reports of the XE037 mutating into various new variants. See data files on XE037a - XE037f. Research on the effects of these variants is ongoing. We do know that XE037d shows signs of PE062 immunity, and XE037b can revive various breeds of canines. However, revival is not as guaranteed as standard XE037 humanoid infection. Canine body size seems to influence the chances. See experiment tXE037b_c.”

“Today we found our solution, quite by accident. It was found that XE037 is completely removed from a revivified body following a series of extremely-high energy 4th dimensional transpositions. Unfortunately, this invariably allows subplane life forms to pass into the prime plan. The cure is worse than the disease.”

[KA101]

Yeah, the lab folks had worked up another chem to remove the blob, but it was so prohibitive to make and administer that rapid-teleporting was the better option. And even that one’s lousy too.

[Nighthawk]

Question is, does the blob keep the body in good condition while utilizing it? Because theoretically, if you removed all of the blob from a zombie, the body would just flop over, but if their brain was still intact, it might be possible to resuscitate them… as a human.

As far as I’m concerned, regular zeds aren’t rotting or anything, right? So can we safely assume that they’re just possessed human bodies at that point?

I’m really interested in seeing if this would be possible within the lore.

[KA101]

[quote=“Nighthawk, post:8, topic:7202”]Question is, does the blob keep the body in good condition while utilizing it? Because theoretically, if you removed all of the blob from a zombie, the body would just flop over, but if their brain was still intact, it might be possible to resuscitate them… as a human.

As far as I’m concerned, regular zeds aren’t rotting or anything, right? So can we safely assume that they’re just possessed human bodies at that point?

I’m really interested in seeing if this would be possible within the lore.[/quote]

The blob does not specifically maintain the body to human spec. It works the gear and fills in for organs, etc as needed, so if you removed it the corpse might be short a pancreas/bladder/liver/heart, probably some muscle mass and nerve tissue as well. XEDRA’s emergency attempts at removing the blob from corpses en masse were to maintain order, not cure individuals.

Regular zeds are obviously no longer living. Any deficit that stopped their life (and there was some reason, else they wouldn’t be a zed) has been fixed by application of Blob. Remove the blob, the deficit comes back.

Special zeds, well, some have not been maintained, and some have been upgraded. Some are more than one body: I’ve always envisioned the Hulk and Jabberwock as made up of several corpses, with Bruce having had 'em sorta liquified via Blob and melded in to create a massive single-human body, whereas Mistah J has more or less just crammed 'em in.

[Nighthawk]

I see.

… Yeah, all in all it seems impossible. Even if the deficit was only something like a lung, and even if you did something crazy like perform surgery on the zombie to give them a new lung, then removed the blob and THEN resuscitated them, it wouldn’t be the only problem. There would always be a brain deficit, because when people die and their brains shut down, the brain just basically starts to decay. So unless you could give someone a new brain (in which case they wouldn’t be the same person) you would be unable to revive them after zombification.

Hrng. I wanted to find a way around it, but it seems impossible.

[Daidalon]

[quote=“Nighthawk, post:10, topic:7202”]I see.

… Yeah, all in all it seems impossible. Even if the deficit was only something like a lung, and even if you did something crazy like perform surgery on the zombie to give them a new lung, then removed the blob and THEN resuscitated them, it wouldn’t be the only problem. There would always be a brain deficit, because when people die and their brains shut down, the brain just basically starts to decay. So unless you could give someone a new brain (in which case they wouldn’t be the same person) you would be unable to revive them after zombification.

Hrng. I wanted to find a way around it, but it seems impossible.[/quote]
High level first aid, electronics, and computer skill: repair a damaged zombie brain using the brain boost cbm. Reroute all essential functions to run on the cbm, freeing the rest for repairing memory and conscious thought.

Tada.

[latogato]

High level first aid, electronics, and computer skill: repair a damaged zombie brain using the brain boost cbm. Reroute all essential functions to run on the cbm, freeing the rest for repairing memory and conscious thought.

OMG, the supposedly dangerous zombies are already a joke, now some people want them turn back into a human? It should be an end of the world game! What next, Garden of Eden Creation Kit?

[Daidalon]

The cbm was rediculously rare pre-cataclysm, and there is bugger all chance you can make new ones. Its really would just be a flavor thing.

[Pthalocy]

I would assume the brain boost CBM operates on some level by stimulating existing neurons to work harder and form new connections. New. If you were to somehow revive a zombie with an intact-enough brain and boost that, it would probably offset some of the brain damage and give you a best-hopes scenario, but brains are so damn fickle you’re still going to wind up with an individual lacking some of their original capacity, and probably find their personality entirely different.

No amount of stimulants is going to make a semi-rancid brain ‘heal’ itself. Brains don’t grow new brain cells. They create new connections between remaining ones and it takes time. Best-case scenario, you’ve got a person with a variety of motor or cognitive disabilities from even subtle brain damage, and it will require you to invest a lot of all-important time providing care for them to manage these while they re-learn a lot of stuff. Personally, if my motivations were to bring back someone I cared about, this would be more horrific than accepting their demise. Any little aspect of their nature changed - well, you’d notice. Trust me.

But more practically, that is time and resources better spent on keeping oneself alive in the apocalypse.

[i2amroy]

Brains don’t grow new brain cells. They create new connections between remaining ones and it takes time.

I certainly agree with your post’s logic, but I’d just like to point out that this has been proven to be false in the real world. You grow large amounts of neurons every day. The idea that once you are out of toddler stage your nervous system stops growing, while still highly believed, isn’t true.

(Of course unless you do some sort of mental activity to connect those new neurons into the existing system then they don’t really do much.)

[Daidalon]

Also, its important to point out that cell death isn’t even close to immediate. The brain stems going to go pretty quick, but storage neurons have a bit of a lifespan.

But, yeah, they definitely won’t be “perfect”. Like I said, it’d be a flavor thing.

Fun fact: Your body is technically capable of repairing any damaged nerves/tissue like a starfish. However, due to the stupidly high complexity of most animal brains, it just sorta assumes it is ‘gone for good’ after a bit instead of trying to re-rewire itself to accommodate additional changes.

[KA101]

Pthalocy knows whereof he speaks. Brain injury (and loss of infrastructural support such as blood/oxygen qualifies) is not something that can be insta-fixed with a fresh install of tbe right CBM.

If the zed had been running the memory-bank aug prior to xyr original (pre-zed) demise, that would probably be useful in reverse-loading the memories. (Dunno re personality–probably not designed to save that.) But rebuilding the wetware (reestablishing the connections, etc) is gonna take some doing.

[Khrysanth]

I’d be more worried about making something Not Human even more intelligent and calculating. It’d be like going off the Nether Cliff the hard way, then building a brain on the other side.

[Pthalocy]

[quote=“Pthalocy, post:14, topic:7202”]Brains don’t grow new brain cells. They create new connections between remaining ones and it takes time.

I certainly agree with your post’s logic, but I’d just like to point out that this has been proven to be false in the real world. You grow large amounts of neurons every day. The idea that once you are out of toddler stage your nervous system stops growing, while still highly believed, isn’t true.

(Of course unless you do some sort of mental activity to connect those new neurons into the existing system then they don’t really do much.)[/quote]

Okay fair point. There’s also like three (four?) types of neurons, differing in shape and size, and some of them have more to do with maintenance of the brain as a brain than with any learning going on. If I remember correctly, anyway. Some of the things I’ve been taught in psych have, like you demonstrated, already been outdated. But yeah. Healed brain or not, it’d still need to re-develop a lot of synaptic connections.

KA101’s scenario would be the one I’d candidate most likely to occur if any sort of reboot were possible. I still don’t think it’s a good idea to go out of one’s way to try and do this to a zombie, for one’s own sake XD

[i2amroy]

Definitely agreed. “Saving” zombies is not something that is ever likely to happen.