Tetanus is too severe

[bugsniper]

After running through a few broken windows, I nearly always get tetanus. This is problematic for a few reasons:

1. In real life, you would usually leave a large hole so that you don’t need to squeeze yourself a lot against broken glass.
2. Glass doesn’t have the rough surfaces that the bacteria live on.
3. Players are supposed to usually have an average or above average dexterity so that they don’t get large cuts from most injuries.
4. Currently, unlike in reality, antibiotics don’t cure tetanus from what I can see.
5. Zombie hordes and scent trail leaks already provide enough of an incentive to bring a crowbar. We don’t need to make it a practical necessity.

So I think tetanus should have its chance reduced or eliminated from broken windows.

[CIB]

The alternative to a crowbar is actually clearing out the window. I think maybe the problem is that clearing out the window takes way too long, when in reality all you’d need to do to move past it safely is to knock out the worst offenders at the base of the window, and then squeeze through carefully.

[Rivet]

1. In real life, you would usually leave a large hole so that you don’t need to squeeze yourself a lot against broken glass.

This is another case where the limitation of ASCII graphics leaves something to be desired. How big is the hole you just made? How much broken glass remains? Use your imagination, I guess; the game can’t really show you directly.

2. Glass doesn’t have the rough surfaces that the bacteria live on.

Clostridium tetani endospores can remain viable in situ for decades, and contrary to popular misconceptions, they can be found all over the environment, not just on rusty nails.

3. Players are supposed to usually have an average or above average dexterity so that they don’t get large cuts from most injuries.

So raise your DEX stat higher next time. The game makes no assumptions about your character’s abilities unless it can derive them from your attributes and skills - no CDDA character is considered to be more dextrous than average unless their DEX attribute reflects that.

4. Currently, unlike in reality, antibiotics don’t cure tetanus from what I can see.

In the real world, antibiotics don’t ‘cure’ tetanus either. They’re used to treat the initial infection, but you need tetanus immune globulin to halt the effects of the tetanus toxin itself.

5. Zombie hordes and scent trail leaks already provide enough of an incentive to bring a crowbar. We don’t need to make it a practical necessity.

It’s not, even now. Break the window and then clean the broken glass out before climbing through.

So I think tetanus should have its chance reduced or eliminated from broken windows.

This is how we test these things; without feedback like yours, we wouldn’t know if it’s happening too often or not often enough.

[StopSignal]

We should have a “Walk/Go With Caution” button to do those kind of things. It would make you move, but instead of running, it would make you walk. Less sound and maybe less likely to set off traps, and could make you move safely (tough slowly) through the windows.

[John_Candlebury]

Well it seems unlikely that the sharp edges of glass that you just made are instantly contaminated with tetanus spores (which AFAIK are mostly soilborne -is that even a word?) but what do I know, afterall microorganisms are everywhere.

From what I can say, every environmental cut (and some traps) have a one in 35 chance of infecting you, I guess this is okay for metals and rubble, but I think that having glass do it can be somewhat annoying.

I would suggest to either:
-Remove tetanus from glass windows
or
-Have the ability to smash broken windows into clean windows (isn’t that what you are doing already when you clean a window?) just to remove the need of first pressing ‘*’ and then searching for the clean window key.

[vache]

I like the idea of double-smash = smash+clean.

[FunsizeNinja123]

I like the idea of double-smash = smash+clean.

[bugsniper]

According to http://www.nachi.org/rust-inspection-prevention.htm

The Clostridium tetani bacteria may be found on any objects exposed to soil, including metal objects that lack any rust. Even non-metal objects can transmit Clostridium tetani. A study of canine tetanus revealed that a large number of cases originated from cuts caused by sharp spikelets of grass known as foxtails. Any cuts caused by an object made dirty by soil, regardless of whether it is rusted or even metal, should be treated as a potential source of Clostridium tetani.

This means that windows should be fairly safe, aside from glass walls, which don’t leave any broken glass anyways. Some places are expected to clean their windows regularly to further reduce the chance of getting tetanus from broken glass. This justifies my argument in reducing the risk of tetanus from cuts caused by glass.

And I agree that the player may want to completely smash the window anyways to avoid getting hurt. On a side note, I think it would make sense for glass windows to cause bleeding instead of tetanus.

[kevin.granade]

Double smash sounds like a good plan for making the glass clearing action more accessable, the construction menu is a kind of bad place for it.
I’m a little on the fence about preventing cuts from glass from causing tetanus. in reality the chance of an infection from glass is probably lower than a lot of other sources, but you said it yourself, “some places are expected to clean their windows regularly to further reduce reduce the risk…”, indicating that there is some risk.

Tetanus vaccine is planned, including resistance or immunity for some characters based on past vaccination.

Other changes I think would be good are a rare warning message when you are cut indicating that there is a risk, a drastic lowering of the infection rate overall, and making tetanus much more dangerous. in reality it’s very very rare, but extremely dangerous if you do get it.

[Aluminumfoil]

Aren’t most people vaccinated against Tetanus anyway? Maybe “no tetanus vaccine” should be a negative trait, with vaccination being assumed.

[The_Lone_Badger]

How do you cure it, anyway?

[Rivet]

How do you cure it, anyway?

Buttloads of antibiotics and regular infusions of tetanus immune globulin.

Unless you mean in-game, in which case I think you use anticonvulsives.

[KA101]

[quote=“The Lone Badger, post:11, topic:6139”]How do you cure it, anyway?

Buttloads of antibiotics and regular infusions of tetanus immune globulin.

Unless you mean in-game, in which case I think you use anticonvulsives.[/quote]

In-game, diazepam is a one_in(3) shot to cure it. Yeah, not the most realistic solution.

[The_Lone_Badger]

In-game, diazepam is a one_in(3) shot to cure it. Yeah, not the most realistic solution.

Does this spawn in hospitals? Or is it someplace weirder?
It seems to be very rare. Since starting actively looking for it I’ve raided three hospitals, a couple of pharmacies and a doctor’s office with no luck.

[chevil]

Tetanus is way too common and too hard to cure.

I think that the double smashing windows should only lower the cut chances and cleaning the windows from glass completely should be left as is.

[bugsniper]

For players who don’t have enough weapons to finish a hospital off, would it be possible to make diazepam craftable, perhaps from gasoline and poppy plants using a chemistry set?.

[KA101]

[quote=“KA101, post:13, topic:6139”]In-game, diazepam is a one_in(3) shot to cure it. Yeah, not the most realistic solution.

Does this spawn in hospitals? Or is it someplace weirder?
It seems to be very rare. Since starting actively looking for it I’ve raided three hospitals, a couple of pharmacies and a doctor’s office with no luck.[/quote]

Looks like uncommon in hospital beds and hard drug spawns (check doctor’s lockups & pharmacies); most common in hospital labs (10, not uncommon) and toxic dumps (rarity 5 though, not very common), rare on science corpses, drug stashes, and survivor zeds (1, the minimum).

[Zireael]

For players who don’t have enough weapons to finish a hospital off, would it be possible to make diazepam craftable, perhaps from gasoline and poppy plants using a chemistry set?.

Good idea.

[bugsniper]

A lot of these issues have been fixed now, which I’m thankful for. There certainly are things we can do to add realism including an incubation period, disease progression, and the fact that the disease usually kills when untreated. But it’s good enough in my opinion.