Used needles/syringes and infections

I was thinking, how come you can continue using the same needle over and over again without risk of infection or anything? Once you use a needle/syringe it should become dirty to some degree and maybe could cause an infection? maybe even some sort of blood infection? It would add a little bit more dimension. I use a lot of morphine while carrying big loads and it just seems pretty easy since you’ll always need one syringe and you don’t even need to clean it. Its far out there, but id like it.

It’s probably one of those “lost of work for small rewards” kind of thing, but I can’t say for certain.

I myself wouldn’t care for it. It just seems like even more tedium for tedium’s sake.

I would imagine it would require:

  1. making a new item: dirty syringe
  2. making output for any syringe used: dirty syringe.
  3. making crafting recipe for cleaning syringes.

If I knew code well enough I could probably do it in relatively little time… IF. Though I suppose reward for that is almost zil. Valid suggestion though. Think it would be mostly .json work.

That’s a really good solution, Litppunk! It would work the same as soiled towels and bloody rags.

I would think the bigger issue, as long as you were using the needle on yourself, would be it getting duller over time without new sharps.

… Yeah thats the basic idea. You sound…impressed? Is it not an obvious solution? Though for lore’s sake and realisticness, all syringe loot found laying on the ground, in bushes etc should be changed to be dirty syringe. Perhaps change all the “clean” syringes that are desired (or at least most of them) to be in packages for sterility. Maybe make it so “dirty” syringe is percentage based bad juju like dirty water, though much higher chances obviously.

I don’t think hypodermic needles have that problem… at least not to a degree that would make it resource practical to include it. I suppose making it have “charges” like other objects could deal with this, though it would probably be much more code intensive.

I also have to disagree with sharpness being the “bigger” issue. The human body is very…sensitive about foreign objects in the bloodstream. Even air is lethal if there is much of it in the bloodstream, as for diseases and solid objects such as dirt or other particles being injected straight into the bloodstream I should think the possible bad results of such should be self evident enough.

If you simply meant that the syringe is only being used by you, then think about the fact that when not in use it is essentially rolling around in your backpack. Not exactly sanitary.

i was just thinking about that (the dirty syringes replacing the syringes laying around in forests/whatnot)

and for the “rolling around your bag” issue, couldn’t there just be syringe caps? you disassemble a syringe with a cap/whatever they’re called and you’d get a syringe. But how would it get dirty while having it in your inventory? would it instantly become a dirty syringe? or would it take some time? i dont know how that would work. Maybe needle specific containers, like holding them in a 3l jar?

Back before there were needle exchanges junkies would just sharpen their needles against a wall occasionally. It’d take a lot of shots for this to ever be an issue that needs addressing, far more than the average DDA survivor would ever take.

I think we can assume there’s always a cap you remove before using, then replace.

I think we can assume there's always a cap you remove before using, then replace.

This makes the most sense. Perhaps only place “dirty” syringe shows up is in bushes on ground etc. All the pre-used ones. sterilizing after every use still seems for the best though… Perhaps make a “used” syringe and a “dirty” syringe. Though I guess you would end up cleaning both the same way…

Oh in hospitals and stuff don’t they just replace the tip?

Yes, I think most syringes nowadays are designed to be disposable as well. I had to give insulin shots to my cat and I got packages of disposable syringes and a little one-way box to keep the used ones in that they wouldn’t come out of.

so… should all the syringes just become disposable then? This seems to opposite the survivor mentality though. Maybe they have small chance to break each use? Or back to charges? Survivor would likely be wiling to repair a disposable syringe and clean it if they thought it might be useful though…

Yup, the tip is what is replaced. I guess the “tube” parts are sterilized inside the facilities, but the tips come pre-sterilized in airtight containers.

A “clean” syringe should come with it’s cap attached.
A “dirty” would need just sterilizing.
A “used” syringe would need not only sterilizing, but crafting a cap for it.

Altough, Imo we could ommit trying to simulate the caps, as a clean-dirty syringe system is enough. This is just overcomplicating things for no good benefit.

EDIT
Even though today syringes are mostly disposable, there is no real reason for a survivor to dispose of his (afaik).
Its not like they will easily break. Maybe reusing re-sterilized syringes could have a small chance to infect you anyway, opposed to no chance with a clean-pristine syringe?

that makes sense. Its not like it would be difficult to pick up a piece of plastic or something that could be used and sterilize it at the same time as syringe. So we can just work off the assumption if it doesn’t come WITH a cap we find something suitable and sterilize it, then just use that from then on.

This right here. I don’t really see any further benefits by going farther, and it’s kinda silly to think that the survivor can’t, you know, just not throw the cap away when they use the syringe (since a lot of those caps are fairly easy to reuse, though you would want to sterilize them first). It’s rather easy to just abstract it away as being part of the “syringe” (we could even add a little note to the description to justify it).

I was thinking about this all together, and how the “cleaning” could be implemented into the game. The game already has all the household stuff you could use to clean syringes irl, bleach (its not suggested.), disinfectant, all that fun stuff, it couldn’t be too hard to sandwich this all in there. I was thinking of the new syringe entities, dirty syringe (A syringe you used on yourself.), dirty syringe of unknown origin (the syringes you’d find in forests/etc), syringe (just the vanilla syringe.). And i was thinking, if you were to bleach a needle, youd have to rinse it out, so once you clean the dirty syringe/syringe of unknown origin/whatever you’d get a bleached syringe(?) then you’d have to rinse it out with water from a bottle/toilet/sink/whatever your heart desires to get a the (rinsed out) syringe. And i know this is gonna be very far fetched, hahaha, and kind of morbid, but instead of infections what about the risk of getting some sort of virus from shooting up, like HIV, or some sort of Hep, you’d have to scavenge the labs for med’s to hold yourself off until your unavoidable death. Some edgy shit guys, it’d be awesome. I should spend less time spewing out mediocre ideas and start understanding how to put my time and dedication into it all myself.

maybe battery powered or spring operated jet injector too?

well if you are doing one of those then they have to make them better than a regular syringe. How would you? More doses without having to clean and recycle it? faster/longer/stronger effect?

maybe an epicenter or ‘blob sea’ dominated by the need to use rebreathers…