So, the Zombie disease is ok, but it isn't terribly realistic. Even with very deadly diseases some people usually recover, which is generally good news for the human race, because otherwise the first deadly disease would wipe us all out.
Note that in the model below, we've changed the value for Infected Time to 10 seconds. The three level indicators are actually scrollbars you can change. If you grab one and pull it you'll see the colour change to the colour of people they control the levels of. Leave the other two scrollbars alone and run the model again, changing the Infected Time to see how it changes how fast the disease spreads. Start with it set to 10 seconds.
Green circle = Susceptible person
Red circle = Infected person
Gray circle = Dead person ('dead' dead, not un-dead!)
[Blue circle = Immune person (none of these yet)
Questions:
How does the speed to death affect the spread of the disease?
Are real-world diseases (like
Ebola)
that spread very rapidly and kill all their victims likely to be the most
dangerous kinds of diseases in terms of most deaths?
How does this relate to, for example, how the government deals with potentially
deadly diseases in cattle like Foot and Mouth?
Go on to Part 3 where we'll look at the full model.